Against Autobiography: Albert Memmi and the Production of Theory

3 Writing without Seeing

71 3 Writing without Seeing The Enigmas of Memmi’s “Denigration of Vision” I write without seeing. Denis Diderot, “Lettre à Sophie Volland du 10 juin 1759” (1930) What happens when one writes without seeing? Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind (1993) The prison-house is the world of sight. Plato, The Republic I’ll let you count all the words through which it is suggested that, to speak truly, one must think according to the measure of the eye. Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (1993) From the blind sage Uncle Makhlouf and the myopic adolescent Alexandre Mordekhaï Benillouche to Marcel, ophthalmologist and narrator of The Scorpion, who despite his chosen profession is unable to save his brother’s failing sight, the heroes of Memmi’s novels are haunted by eyes and the possibility of their failure. Memmi’s personal essays also reveal an anxious rehearsal of the state of his own vision: in Le nomade immobile, he announces on the very first page that despite various advances in technology, nothing can be done for his “failing eyes,” which now prevent him from practicing his favorite hobbies.1 At the beginning of a chapter titled “Nous sommes tous dépendants” [We are all dependent], Memmi explains: “I suffered a retinal detachment, strangely heralded by 72 Writing without Seeing premonitory dreams for which I still have no explanation, despite the help of doctors. During a stay in Argentina a series of flashes caused a definitive lesion in my right eye. In addition to permanent discomfort . . . I am haunted by worries about the health of my other eye.”2 Finally, in a radio interview, Memmi links the incidence of ocular disorders in Tunisia to the country’s climate, calling the sun there “blinding” and noting that Tunisia has “the greatest percentage of eye disease.”3 For Memmi, it would seem that poor eyesight is, among other things, an endemic Tunisian characteristic, a national signifier of sorts. Because it occurs with some persistence in Memmi’s nonfiction, it is tempting to read the trope of blindness in Memmi’s novels through a biographical filter. Writing about the pervasiveness of all things ocular in The Scorpion, Jacqueline Arnaud notes that Memmi “turns into a symbol that which is, for him—nearsighted and suffering from a retinal detachment just after the publication of [The Scorpion]—a personal obsession nourished with observation and exact information.”4 Without denying a degree of biographical referentiality, Tunisian scholar Afifa Marzouki nonetheless brings greater nuance to her interpretation of the repeated tropes of blindness in Memmi’s work: “In Memmi’s insistence [on eyes and eye disease] one can see a certain penchant for realistic detail, perhaps even an autobiographical reference, but also an interest in seeing, in seeing clearly, that is to say, in understanding. While the fear of physical blindness is indeed present, the anguish of spiritual blindness is even more fundamental. . . . Seeing well, in Memmi’s oeuvre, is in fact having the highest degree possible of self-awareness. The gaze is therefore basically introspective.”5 Marzouki’s reading is helpful insofar as it attempts to move beyond a literal interpretation of the representation of blindness as a purely physical infirmity. Rather than a fact underscored and reflected by the author’s own medical history, here the fear of physical blindness symbolizes a fear of metaphysical blindness, or a lack of insight. One is reminded of Oedipus, whose capacity for insight Writing without Seeing 73 could only flourish once the possibility of physical vision had been permanently removed. The gaze, however, is not only introspective. Notwithstanding its continual return to the trope of blindness, Memmi’s work (both fiction and nonfiction) is also marked by references to, or the presence of, elements belonging to the broader domain of vision and the visual. It is clear that blindness and visuality are linked; on a narrative level, Memmi’s blind characters or those with poor eyesight are juxtaposed with the figure of an ophthalmologist, or with figures who suffer from a surplus of vision—those who, like Tiresias , saw or knew too much. Nonetheless, the presence of the visual extends beyond diegetic and tropological concerns to include the manner in which the texts themselves may be apprehended as visual objects. In The Scorpion, for example, five different typefaces are used to represent the different storylines, thus endowing the novel’s polyphonic presentation with a legend that can be apprehended...