Presence and absence in Artistic representation: When Rousseau answered with music to Derrida and de Man

Abstract

Jacques Derrida based his first important work on the reading of Roussau's Essay On the Origin of Language.Derrida exposed systematic contradictions between the philosophical positions present in that essay and the actual descriptions. Soon after, Paul de Man declared the absence of such contradictions or “blind spots” in the writings of Rousseau. For de Man, it is in Jacques Derrida's eyes that something intercepts the light. He explains how Derrida reads (and misreads) Rousseau through Rousseau's very influence. In other words, de Man writes in turn to account for a particular text he thinks Derrida cannot see because of the traditional angle in the readings. This is especially the case in a central passage of the Essay where Rousseau develops his meditation on music and describes it as an art not of presence but of absence.