Rhetoric and Rhythm — Derrida, Nancy and the Poetics of Drawing

Abstract

Opening with a consideration of the distribution of the two graphic acts — drawing and writing — this article offers a comparative study of Jacques Derrida's and Jean-Luc Nancy's respective exhibitions and catalogue essays on the subject of drawing. Through a comparative examination of what I take to be their central theoretical contributions to the study of drawing — Derrida its ‘rhetoric’, Nancy its ‘rhythm’ — this article moves on to suggest how these concepts inform a theory of poetic lineation.