德里达的记忆

Derrida's Memoirs

耿幼壮(Geng Youzhuang)

《基督教文化學刊》 11期 (2004/05) Pp. 164-182

並列摘要

Among Derrida's many books, Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-portrait and Other Ruins is a very unique one. As an exhibition catalogue, Memoirs of the Blind offers detailed readings of a collection of images selected by Derrida from Louvre, interweaving analysis of texts from Old and New Testament and writers like Diderot, Baudelaires, Merleau-Ponty, and Borges. Moreover, Derrida, in this catalogue essay, reports repeatedly his own memories related to vision and blindness. Consisted of readings of pictures, texts, and personal experiences, Derrida's Memoirs of the Blind is itself an example of his theory of text, a structure of what he calls ＂difference＂, of endless substitutability of one ＂trace＂ with another ＂trace＂, or, an experience of what he calls ＂ruins＂, which challenges all forms of totality, unity, and identity. At the same time, Memoirs of the Blind, with all its visible markings on the page, demonstrates Derrida's own unique style of writing. Given his Jewish background, this style of writing, as Geoffery Hartman has put it, is that of a ＂Hebrew rather than a Hellene: aniconic yet intensely graphic.＂ By reading Derrida s Memoirs of the Blind, this paper hopes to show how much insight a text as such can provide, e. g. insights into writing and drawing, the spirit of the night, an aesthetics of the sense of touch, the fidelity of faith and the representation, the gaze veiled by tears, and the ruins of trace.