Jean-Luc Nancy: Ya sa(ves) lo que quiero decir [Vous voyez ce que je veux dire]

Abstract

 In August 2021, the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy passed away. In the monographic notebook that Escritura e Imagen dedicated to his thought in number 15 (2019), we wanted to emphasize the importance that his work has for Aesthetics.

On this occasion we would like to focus on how his texts invite us to think differently about the relationship between writing and image. So much so, that at the time of the foundation of this publication we wanted to count on his support, which resulted in one of the gestures of generosity so frequent in him, not only in agreeing to be part of the Scientific Advisory Board of Writing and Image, but in providing us with a then unpublished work, «La imagen: Mímesis & Méthexis», which was published in the second issue of the magazine. There Nancy reflected, precisely, on the relationship between what was said and what was written about a painting by Cézanne: “by the sole fact of its nature as a citation, the image already makes us hear something. It makes the word of Ecclesiastes resound, the vanitas vanitatum that cannot but resound because it is pronounced more than written, pronounced in its writing, directed and launched as a warning, as a motion, as a warning and as a reminder”.

As a tribute, we wanted the new section that «La imagen: Mímesis & Méthexis» will carry from now on, the “Guest Article”, to receive as its first guest one of the last texts written by Jean-Luc Nancy, in which, once again, addresses the relationship between the word and the image from another perspective. We could not think of a better way to continue remembering the validity of his work for those who want to think about that conjunction that makes writing and image touch in a relationship, in a sharing, partage, almost always problematic and, at the same time, inevitable.

Finally, we would like to thank Hélène Nancy for the facilities she has given us to publish this translation, as well as Michel Surya, director of Lignes magazine, where this text appeared for the first time in 2021.