Table of Contents

Editors’ Foreword

Part 1: The Traces of the Visible

The Spatial Arts: An Interview by Peter Brunette and David Wills

Thinking Out of Sight

Trace and Archive, Image and Art

Part 2: Rhetoric of the Line: Painting, Drawing

To Illustrate, He Said

The Philosopher’s Design: An Interview by Jérôme Coignard

Drawing by Design

Pregnances

To Save the Phenomena: For Salvatore Puglia

Four Ways to Drawing

Ecstasy, Crisis: An Interview with Valerio Adami and Roger Lesgards

Color to the Letter

The “Undersides” of Painting, Writing, and Drawing: Support, Substance, Subject, Suppost, and Supplice

Part 3: Spectralities of the Image: Photography, Video, Cinema, and Theater

Aletheia

Videor

The Ghost Dance: An Interview by Mark Lewis and Andrew Payne

Cinema and Its Ghosts: An Interview by Antoine de Baecque and Thierry Jousse

The Sacrifice

Marx Is (Quite) Somebody

The Survivor, the Surcease, the Surge

Notes
Bibliography on the Arts and Architecture
Filmography
Notes on Editors and Translators
Index

About the Author

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, and professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Ginette Michaud is professor in the Département des littératures de langue française at the Université de Montréal. Joana Masó teaches French literature and composition at the University of Barcelona, where Javier Bassas teaches translation theory. Laurent Milesi is professor of English literature and critical theory at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
 

Reviews

“Who other than Jacques Derrida could have demonstrated with this degree of insight and lucidity the essential relationship between the visual arts and invisibility, nonappearance, absence, the night, blindness, even death? This superb collection of essays on painting, drawing, photography, video, cinema, and theater will forever transform both the way we understand Derrida and the way we look at the visual arts.”
*Michael Naas, DePaul University*

“This wonderful collection brings together several of Derrida’s most beautiful and wildly engaging thoughts on the visual and performing arts. Many of the essays, lectures, and interviews are presented here for the first time in English, and others are even published for the first time anywhere. Together, not only do they delineate the relations among drawing, painting, photography, film, theater, and writing, but they also suggest that the arts are never just art; they are different modes of thinking and writing. This collection offers an exquisitely rich introduction to Derrida’s singular contribution to the arts of reading and thinking.”
*Eduardo L. Cadava, Princeton University*

"This wide-ranging collection of essays, lectures, and interviews, shows philosopher Jacques Derrida (Acts of Religion) (1930–2004) applying his signature deconstructionist thinking to the visual arts...Philosophically minded readers will find much to consider in the way of art criticism."
*Publisher's Weekly*