Abstract

The subject of the study is the problem of drawing in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and, in particular, the so-called "blindness hypothesis", which Derrida expresses in the work "Memoirs of a blind man: self-portrait and other ruins": "drawing... and the drawing operation must have some relation to blindness." Derrida explores this well—established ontotheological tradition of classical metaphysics: blinding here becomes a necessary sacrificial act, a condition that makes possible the transition from the physical eye to the spiritual, so Derrida describes it as a "sacrificial" economy, which is inevitably followed by an artist, each drawing of which turns out to be a prophecy of a blind man, indicating the horizons of the future.  Explicating Derrida's hypothesis, we turn not only directly to the text of the "Memoirs of a Blind Man" and the documentary narrative film that accompanied it, but also strive to reconstruct the exhibition of the same name held at the Louvre in 1990, which was also curated by Derrida. The comparison of these three layers made it possible to more fully reveal the "blindness hypothesis" and fit it into a more general philosophical context of deconstruction, as well as to rethink the problems of figurative drawing, its mimetic and representative nature. We come to the conclusion that the essence of the drawing has nothing to do with the visible, and its source lies entirely at the level of memory.