Vision and clarvoyance in Derrida and Deleuze: representation in action

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to interpolate two texts: Memoirs of the Blind by J. Derrida's and The Time-Image by J. Deleuze. The connecting element I will try to highlight in these two texts is the figure of the "clairvoyant". This figure, in both texts, represents an alternative to the classic idea of vision which is linked to presence and to immediate perception. The figure of the clairvoyant, in myth for example, says Derrida in Memoirs of the Blind, is often linked to blindness: the clairvoyant is the one who, while not seeing what is there (or perhaps precisely because of this incapacity), is able to see beyond the presence, that is to say to foresee the future or to see the past. In the same way, Deleuze in The imagetime connects the figure of the clairvoyant to the idea of the "crystal-image".
Through the distinction between vision and clairvoyance, Deleuze and Derrida carry on the idea of a representation "in action", "in motion", which involves a reflection on the relationship between representation and time. The paper will question the conceptual tools that the two texts propose in order to work on the representation understood not as a "finished object" but as a "representational act".