The image is familiar enough from Japanese woodblock prints: two women in casually erotic disarray, kimonos slightly askew. One tips her head back into the hands of the other, who is working through the thick hair, her plump fingers and sloe-eyed expression revealing a lazy intimacy.

But instead of an elaborate geisha coiffure, the woman seems to be putting in … braids? And there's none of the stark-white makeup favored by the beauties depicted by Utamaro and other ukiyo-e masters; both women are in blackface. Dark foundation covers their bodies, save for the creamy border of their natural skin tone right around the hairline.

Watching people write about Jacques Derrida -- his theories, his passing on October 8 -- has been a fantastic sight, much like watching a man shinny shimmy up a rope while simultaneously trying to unravel it with his legs. Because how does one write about the so-called father of deconstruction, who helped unmoor text from authorial intent and dismantle notions of black-and-white absolutes, and whose insistence on reading against the grain of a piece yielded unnerving contradictions and unseen possibilities for interpretation? Writing about Derrida can be a treacherous exercise: You are writing, but also reading against yourself, trying to pick out echoes of trace meaning; you are writing, but also aware that you are being erased from the very text you are creating.