Ch. 9, "Blanchot's 'holocaust'", discusses the French thinker's philosophy of the Holocaust.

This timely collection of essays is the first to be written on the work of Maurice Blanchot in English. One of the finest writers of our time, Blanchot is a contemporary of Bataille and Levinas; his writing has influenced the likes of Derrida and Foucault. Eminent commentators featured here include: Simon Critchley, Paul Davies, Cristopher Fynsk, Rodolphe Gasche, Leslie Hill, Michael Holland, Jeffery Mehlman, Roger Laporte, Ian Maclachlan, Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier, Gillian Rose and Ann Smock. The essays consider the (...) political implications of Blanchot's questioning the relationship between philosophy and literature. In addition, the provocative issue of Blanchot's politics during the 1930s is clarified by a letter from Blanchot to one of the contributors, published here for the first time. Maurice Blanchot: The Demand of Writing is a crucial selection for all students of philosophy, literature or French studies. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 2, pp 155 - 174 What does it mean to say “Yes” to life? What does it mean to affirm life? What does it mean to _not_ be nihilistic? One possible answer is the appropriation of finitude. But Klossowski argues that this amounts to a “voluntarist” fatalism. Though Klossowski draws attention to the temptation of “voluntarist” fatalism on the part of Nietzsche and readers of Nietzsche, he himself is tempted by redemption, i.e., by being redeemed (...) from the weight of responsibility. Using the very “logic” of Klossowski’s own reading of the eternal return, Blanchot will call this possibility of redemption into question. Blanchot’s reading of Nietzsche’s eternal return draws attention to that moment when death as possibility _turns into_ death as impossibility. This _weakening_ of the negative brings, according to Blanchot, _not_ redemption from the burden of responsibility, but infinite responsibility. (shrink)

Examines the notion of passivity in the work of Levinas, Blanchot, and Agamben.

In these two essays, two of the most important French thinkers of our time reflect on each other's work. In so doing, novelist/essayist Maurice Blanchot and philosopher Michel Foucault develop a new perspective on the relationship between subjectivity, fiction, and the will to truth. The two texts present reflections on writing, language, and representation which question the status of the author/subject and explore the notion of a "neutral" voice that arises from the realm of the "outside." This book is (...) crucial not only to an understanding of these two thinkers, but also to any overview of recent French thought.Michel Foucault was the holder of a chair at the College de France. Among his works are Madness and Civilization, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality Maurice Blanchot, born in 1907, is a novelist and critic. His works include Death Sentence, Thomas the Obscure, and The Space of Literature. (shrink)

Lao Tseu, Blanchot et Merleau-Ponty proposent, chacun à sa manière, une lecture singulière de l'acte de nomination. Si, pour Merleau-Ponty, la langue fabrique du sens, pour Lao Tseu, elle va au-delà des significations que les mots portent pour s'abimer dans l'impossibilité d'affirmer. Et c'est à travers les méandres du langage que Blanchot rencontre Lao Tseu. Le "Parler peu est se conformer à la nature" de Lao Tseu interpelle le "la nature est à l'intérieur - de Cézanne que Merleau-Ponty (...) réinterprète sans cesse. Ce dialogue hors du temps questionne le langage comme parole plurielle. L'intention de cet ouvrage est de proposer des pistes jamais entrevues entre la philosophie du Tao et l'acte de nomination de la tradition occidentale."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

For anyone even passingly familiar with Maurice Blanchot, it might initially seem surprising to encounter a collection dedicated to exploring sonic encounters with and resonances of or from his wor...

This timely collection of essays is the first to be written on the work of Maurice Blanchot in English. One of the finest writers of our time, Blanchot is a contemporary of Bataille and Levinas; his writing has influenced the likes of Derrida and Foucault. Eminent commentators featured here include: Simon Critchley, Paul Davies, Cristopher Fynsk, Rodolphe Gasche, Leslie Hill, Michael Holland, Jeffery Mehlman, Roger Laporte, Ian Maclachlan, Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier, Gillian Rose and Ann Smock. The essays consider the (...) political implications of Blanchot's questioning the relationship between philosophy and literature. In addition, the provocative issue of Blanchot's politics during the 1930s is clarified by a letter from Blanchot to one of the contributors, published here for the first time. _Maurice Blanchot: The Demand of Writing_ is a crucial selection for all students of philosophy, literature or French studies. (shrink)

Blanchot provides a compelling insight into one of the key figures in the development of postmodern thought. Although Blanchot's work is characterised by a fragmentary and complex style, Leslie Hill introduces clearly and accessibly the key themes in his work. He shows how Blanchot questions the very existence of philosophy and literature and how we may distinguish between them, stresses the importance of his political writings and the relationship between writing and history that characterised Blanchot's later (...) work; and considers the relationship between Blanchot and key figures such as Emmanuel Levinas and Georges Bataille and how this impacted on his work. Placing Blanchot at the centre stage of writing in the twentieth century, Blanchot also sheds new light on Blanchot's political activities before and after the Second World War. This accessible introduction to Blanchot's thought also includes one of the most comprehensive bibliographies of his writings of the last twenty years. (shrink)

This essay contains a consideration of Maurice Blanchot's contribution to the collective project that came to be known as The International Review. It focuses on Blanchot's insistence that the project be collective and international, and pursues Blanchot's effort to provide a thought of the fragmentary that will answer these imperatives. With special attention to the question of literature, the essay concludes with a consideration of Blanchot's own proposed contribution, his famous piece ‘Berlin’.

Maurice Blanchot remains a writer whose work, though often cited, is little-known to the English-speaking reader. In The Blanchot Reader Michael Holland answers that urgent need and does so in a way that provides a coherent perspective on what by any standard is an extraordinary personal and intellectual career.

Maurice Blanchot Though Maurice Blanchot’s status as a major figure in 20th century French thought is indisputable, it is debatable how best to classify his thought and writings. To trace the itinerary of Blanchot’s development as a thinker and writer is to traverse the span of 20th century French intellectual history, as Blanchot lived … Continue reading Blanchot, Maurice →.

Maurice Blanchot occupies a central though still-overlooked position in the Anglo-American reception of 20th-century continental philosophy and literary criticism. On the one hand, his rigorous yet always-playful exchanges with the most challenging figures of the philosophical and literary canons of modernity have led thinkers such as Georges Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault to acknowledge Blanchot as a major influence on the development of literary and philosophical culture after World War II. On the other hand, (...) class='Hi'>Blanchot's reputation for frustrating readers with his difficult style of thought and writing has resulted in a missed opportunity for leveraging Blanchot in advancing the most essential discussions and debates going on today in the comparative study of literature, philosophy, politics, history, ethics, and art. Blanchot's voice is simply too profound, too erudite, and too illuminating of what is at stake at the intersections of these disciplines not to be exercising more of an influence than it has in only a minority of intellectual circles. Understanding Blanchot, Understanding Modernism brings together an international cast of leading and emergent scholars in making the case for precisely what contemporary modernist studies stands to gain from close inspection of Blanchot's provocative post-war writings. (shrink)

The article links Blanchot’s philosophical and political ideas. Embarking from his recurrent dialogue with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, it traces the development of Blanchot’s “dissident” version of modernism and his notion of “writing”, alongside his post-war political involvement and writing. I argue that Blanchot never relinquished the purist modernist idea of the privilege of writing and with it the privilege of his own self-identification primarily as a writer. It is my contention that this emphasis sometimes obfuscated his vision, both (...) conceptually and politically. I exemplify my claim by appealing to Blanchot’s unconditional support of Israel and Zionism. (shrink)

Explores Blanchot's philosophical meditation on three poets, Mallarmé, Hölderlin, and René Char alongside his contribution to Jewish philosophy.

If we look for the ideal of language that goes through the philosophical tradition, we immediately find the linguistic paradigm ruled by the logical empire. This one sets the limit between reason and the meaningless silence. Nevertheless, we can ́t ignore the other logic that has fissured the monolithic rationality, opening the possibilities of other way of thinking and also thinking the other. Blanchot has been one of the most important exponents of that other reason and has received Kafka (...) ́s great influence, so bringing his thought to literature perhaps made Blanchot think of the outside.  . (shrink)

O artículo constitui uma tentativa de reconstrução da noção de comunidade a partir da literatura na obra de Maurice Blanchot.A comunidade apresenta-se como uma forma original e inovadora de relação social.

In these two essays, two of the most important French thinkers of our time reflect on each other's work. In so doing, novelist/essayist Maurice Blanchot and philosopher Michel Foucault develop a new perspective on the relationship between subjectivity, fiction, and the will to truth. The two texts present reflections on writing, language, and representation which question the status of the author/subject and explore the notion of a "neutral" voice that arises from the realm of the "outside." This book is (...) crucial not only to an understanding of these two thinkers, but also to any overview of recent French thought.Michel Foucault was the holder of a chair at the College de France. Among his works are Madness and Civilization, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality Maurice Blanchot, born in 1907, is a novelist and critic. His works include Death Sentence, Thomas the Obscure, and The Space of Literature. (shrink)

This book offers the first fully documented and historically contextualised account of the origins and implications of the concept of community in the work of Nancy and Blanchot. It analyses in detail the underlying philosophical, political, literary, and religious implications of the often misrepresented debate between Blanchot and Nancy.

Blanchot often evoked the silence required for literary writing, a silence which he says must “be imposed” on a pre-existing and indistinct murmur of language. Likewise, he evokes this murmur itself as an originary ground of all speech, including literary speech. Less often recognized are the ways in which he also locates this murmur in the realm of public speech and everyday language, the rumor of speech spoken by no one and by everyone, a realm which he in turn (...) links with the exigencies of publication and publicity that bear on the literary work within modern societies marked by mass media and technically mediated communication. Blanchot himself thus points to an unexpected convergence, in these sonic images of impersonal murmuring flows of language, between literary language per se, and a language that is traditionally considered inauthentic, empty, superficial, a chattering nullity. This essay attempts to press on this border by showing Blanchot’s anxious, and probably futile, attempts to maintain the distinction he so profoundly and rigorously effaces. As literature is threatened by the indistinction of language from which it originates, it reveals an unexpected convergence with the leveling modes of language marked by mass media and by technicity in general. (shrink)

This article argues that Maurice Blanchot is a significant presence in Bernard Stiegler's Technics and Time series. The article first sets out Stiegler's invocation of the Blanchotian ‘change of epoch’ in the first volume, which attempts to situate Blanchot within the horizon of technics. I argue Blanchot's disaster is a hidden element in Stiegler's play on the motifs of the star and catastrophe. The article then traces how these motifs emerge in the second and third volumes, in (...) which the technical forms of photography and cinema become more important and where the motifs are woven together through reference to works by Roland Barthes, D. W. Winnicott and Federico Fellini. Stiegler filters these references to apparently disparate figures through Blanchot's analyses of writing and temporality. Tracing both overt and unacknowledged references to Blanchot in Stiegler's text, I conclude that Stiegler's use of Blanchot destabilizes his conceptions of time and epochality. (shrink)

In essays written between 1960 and 1963, Blanchot embarks on a new line of thought, beginning with fundamental philosophical division between language and vision. The contrast between the two domai...

In this essay I will examine the development of the notion of transcendence in Blanchot's early critical writings. Doing so indicates the radical way that Blanchot reconfigures this central ontological and theological term by way of his readings of the literary use of language. In turn this exposes the essential relation between finitude and literature, something which the second part of the essay will examine by way of Heidegger's study of the myth of Er.

This paper analyzes the figure of the intellectual in Michel Foucault and Maurice Blanchot, from three distinct perspectives: 1) The affirmation of the anonymity of language; 2) the critical approach against power; and 3) the ethics of thinking and writing. The intellectual is thus characterized as an anonymous voice among anonymous voices; as someone who holds power accountable; as a solidary guard for the anonymous—and his writing as the exercise of a specific kind of responsibility.

I had imagined this article beginning quite straightforwardly, if somewhat hyperbolically, with the following assertion and answer: The critical essays of Maurice Blanchot constitute one of the twentieth century's profoundest and most significant philosophical reflections on literature and literary language. This is, after all, not only what I believe to be the case but also an assertion and a belief whose plausibility this article would like to demonstrate. What makes it impossible simply to begin in this fashion is the (...) manner in which such an opening seems to require that the conceptions of literature, of philosophy, and of the relations and tensions between them be fixed in advance. If Blanchot's writing is, to an arguably interesting degree, marginal to and deliberately other than philosophy, then our account of it would seem to require an account of that marginality and its significance. To consider Blanchot in relation to philosophy is to find oneself in danger of being faced with two unsatisfactory and constricting ways of proceeding, although neither is obviously wrong. (shrink)

This article sets out to think through the double absence of literary language posited by Blanchot in L’Espace littéraire in the shadow cast by a consideration of Alvin Lucier’s piece I am sitting in a room and the sound installation practice of Bernhard Leitner. What I wish to suggest is that a consideration of these sound works enables us to identify a parallelism in the mechanics of the literary sign that creates the space of literature in Blanchot and (...) the phenomenological experience of the visitor entering into and thereby enacting the space of installation. If the term “phenomenological” here requires a parenthetical qualifier, this is because the double absence enacted on the sign in Blanchot is deployed here from within the visitor in the creation of the space of installation in a move that requires us to reformulate our thinking about the creation of space of all kinds. In revisiting Blanchot’s L’Espace littéraire in this way, it is suggested that the ethical and... (shrink)

Although there is much scholarship on Maurice Blanchot’s relationship to his contemporaries on the French intellectual scene, substantially less has been made of his debts to the German philosophical heritage in general, and to G. W. F. Hegel in particular. In this article, the author maintains that Blanchot’s association of literature with worklessness comprises a direct, if somewhat tacit, refusal of Hegel’s determination of art as a work of spirit. The author argues that Blanchot’s critical relation to (...) Hegel sheds new light not only on Blanchot’s conception of literature and related themes of language, but also on his view of the significance of literature as a powerful and elusive force of resistance to hegemonic and ideological programs of many kinds. (shrink)

Blanchot’s rejection of vision as the fundamental philosophical metaphor is well known: “Seeing is not speaking” (The Infinite Conversation (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993) 25). Furthermore, his central idea of the limit-experience (borrowed from Bataille) is a “detour from everything visible and invisible” (210). As part of his Heideggerian heritage, the increased importance of hearing (and aurality in general) lacks the critical appraisal it deserves. Pari passu for voice. Blanchot’s investigation of voice, spoken, interior, literary, is extensive. (...) Various works of fiction, notably The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me, explore the meme, which is intensified in critical essays on Hölderlin, Kafka, Rilke, and Valéry, where the voice’s musicality is given to performance. The studies exemplify the operation of “pure voice,” voice no longer in relation to and under the constraints of the interlocutor: its rhythm, tempo, and melody. His clearest, though lapidary, remarks on voice appear in discussion of the Narcissus mythomeme. There, voice is related not only to Narcissus’ love of an (unrecognized) self but also to the intrigue of Echo and her mimetic reproduction of voice. I give a close reading of Blanchot’s rendition of Ovid’s story to show the central role that voice plays in his “great refusal” of philosophy and concomitant opening to the outside, the “beyond being,” its nomadism and messianism. (shrink)

Blanchot discusses two versions of imagination. The first version, as the copy of an object, is premeditated or provoked by the conscious process of the mind, whereas in the second version, of the image, a thing becomes a complete empty space outside human consciousness and finds the opportunity to shine itself in itself and for itself. The object never resembles anything but itself, the image of itself. This paper argues that with Blanchot, the human in confrontation with the (...) thing in itself in a passive and neutral relation becomes the image of itself. Keeping a distance from each other not for the sake of knowing and comprehension, both the object and the human are at perpetual distance . While thinking of Blanchot's relationship and distance , it is argued that Ibn 'Arabi's idea of barzakh is the space of imagination, an intermediate reality works through distancing and setting relationship . In this sense, Ibn 'Arabi goes outside ontological horizons believing in essence or existence. (shrink)

What happens when philosophy and literature meet? This pioneering study of the essays and fiction of Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, and Maurice Blanchot examines the relationship between the literary and the philosophical dimension of their work and throws new light on the radical singularity of their writing.

Após uma análise do final de História da loucura, propomos uma leitura do artigo de Blanchot sobre este livro com o objetivo de explorar um diálogo possível entre ambos os autores. Defendemos que o tema de fundo deste diálogo é a relação entre pensamento e esquecimento. A questão que guia este diálogo concerne à possibilidade da construção de um pensamento que caminharia em direção a um tipo de esquecimento ativo e não de uma falta da memória. Defendemos a hipótese (...) de que a reflexão blanchotiana sobre o esquecimento, ainda que situada num espaço de pensamento diferente daquele de Foucault quanto a conceitos, metodologia e objetos, pode ajudar a compreender a noção de ausência de obra, tal como ela aparece ao final de História da loucura. Ademais, também consideramos que tal noção repercute na obra foucaultiana posterior, mesmo que ela não seja literalmente retomada. Defendemos que tal repercussão concerne especialmente à questão da relação entre o trabalho de Foucault e o presente, bem como argumentamos que o diálogo com Blanchot pode ajudar a pensar a ontologia crítica do presente enquanto esforço de esquecimento ativo do presente e de si mesmo. (shrink)

Writing, Maurice Blanchot taught us, is not something that is in one's power. It is, rather, a search for a non-power that refuses mastery, order, and all established authority. For Blanchot, this search was guided by an enigmatic exigency, an arresting rupture, and a promise of justice that required endless contestation of every usurping authority, an endless going out toward the other. "The step/not beyond" ("le pas au-dela") names this exilic passage as it took form in his influential (...) later work, but not as a theme or concept, since its "step" requires a transgression of discursive limits and any grasp afforded by the labor of the negative. Thus, to follow "the step/not beyond" is to follow a kind of event in writing, to enter a movement that is never quite captured in any defining or narrating account. Last Steps attempts a practice of reading that honors the exilic exigency even as it risks drawing Blanchot's reflective writings and fragmentary narratives into the articulation of a reading. It brings to the fore Blanchot's exceptional contributions to contemporary thought on the ethico-political relation, language, and the experience of human finitude. It offers the most sustained interpretation of The Step Not Beyond available, with attentive readings of a number of major texts, as well as chapters on Levinas and Blanchot's relation to Judaism. Its trajectory of reading limns the meaning of a question from The Infinite Conversation that implies an opening and a singular affirmation rather than a closure: "How had he come to will the interruption of the discourse?". (shrink)

"Blanchot is an even greater waste of time than Proust". George Poulet's judgment, in Ann Smock's wry translation, gives pause to anyone who might claim contemporary literary or political relevance for the French writer, critic, and journalist. Poulet writes, "Thus, much more radically even than Proust, Maurice Blanchot appears a man of 'lost time'".1 How does relegating him to such a forgotten past, only accessed involuntarily through missteps, square with his enduring influence over post-war French thought and narrative? (...) Blanchot seems to reject the redemptive abilities attributed to writing from the Phaedrus to Proust. In his thinking, "all anamnesis is radically impossible,"... (shrink)

This essay argues for a reading of Levinas’ work which prioritizes the significance of the il y a over the personal Other. I buttress this reading by using the well-documented intersections between Levinas’ work and that of Maurice Blanchot. Said otherwise, I argue that Levinas’ relationship with Blanchot (a relationship that is very much across the notion of the il y a) calls scholars of the Levinasian corpus to place the conception of impersonal existence to the forefront. To (...) do so is to take seriously the complex relationship between Levinas’ explicitly ethical account of the face, and his phenomenological account of impersonal existence. To approach Levinas in this way (by way of his relationship with Blanchot) is to not only recognize that the ethical import of the face lies in its being without determination or nomenclature, but it is to also fully acknowledge the underlying horror of a Levinasian rendition of the ethical encounter. (shrink)

“Literature and the Right to Death” is probably the most quoted of French thinker Maurice Blanchot’s texts. For decades it has been discussed by such important figures as Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, or even the writer Paul Auster. Its importance is twofold: on the one hand, it is often considered an important gateway to Blanchot’s literary thought. On the other hand, it constitutes a substantial example of the new reception of Hegel in France after the Second World War. (...) Although there is no doubt about its Kojèvo-Hegelian inspiration and its center in what we could call “literary experience”, this article intends to explore another of its layers: its relation to the discussion around humanism and the Terror, as forgotten as it was central in France at the end of the 1940’s. We will thus try to lay the foundations for a new reading of this fundamental piece in Blanchot’s production. (shrink)

The article explores the striking coincidences in Heidegger's and Blanchot's account of the image as death mask. The analysis of the respective theories of the image brings forth two radically divergent conceptions of thinking as "laying patent" (Heidegger) and of thinking as "laying bare" (Blanchot).

Ce livre offre un parcours en compagnie d'ecrivains, philosophes et poetes, parmi les plus marquants de la deuxieme moitie du XXe siecle. Son point de depart est une question qui porte sur l'essence meme de la litterature: que signifie aimer avec passion une oeuvre et l'homme qui est derriere?... Comment vit-on avec? Et qu'y trouve-t-on pour vivre avec soi meme, apprendre a vivre ainsi? Il s'agit donc d'un livre ecrit a la premiere personne par un auteur qui aura eu la (...) chance de croiser le chemin de quelques grandes figures de la pensee francaise contemporaine: Edmond Jabes, Jacques Derrida et Andre du Bouchet, Maurice Blanchot de facon plus lointaine. On y trouvera pourtant une volonte clairement pedagogique. Didier Cahen reprend et etudie les enonces multiples de ces createurs de la postmodernite sur l'articulation de la pensee et de la litterature ou sur l'espace commun de la philosophie et de la poesie. Dans la foulee, il aborde des questions plus ouvertes, qui touchent a l'intuition de l'autre, au non-savoir qu'explore la face cachee de la litterature. Comme le demontrent les oeuvres singulieres de Roger Laporte et de Marcel Cohen, ecrire c'est mettre sa vie en jeu, se fier a ce qui vient, suivre l'ordre de l'Autre... en se jouant de l'etre. Indiscipline au coeur des disciplines, cet exercice de la litterature traverse ainsi les genres, engage son ecriture au-dela des lignes du livre, delivre le message qui se lit a livre ouvert. (shrink)

In L'Arrêt de mort, as Derrida suggests, an ‘epochal suspension’ manifests itself, compulsively pulsating so as to conjure a certain spectrality beyond all consciousness, perception, or ordinary attentiveness. Re-reading Blanchot's text, I argue that it is on the borderlines of sleep that the ‘arrythmic pulsation’ of the arrêt de mort happens as impossible event – ‘the state of suspension in which it's over – and over again, and you'll never have done with that suspension itself’, to quote Derrida once (...) more. While ‘Living On’ makes little of sleep, however, I take this cue to follow a pathway which leads from Blanchot to Levinas. Blanchot's writing exposes the sleep of reason which occurs in the very promise of perfect day, a promise which mutates in the dream he associates with the ‘other night’, a dream which harbours the irrepressible return of ‘time's absence’, and which opens on to the very ‘outside’ which the world – and the self – lacks or wants (as much as ‘world’ or ‘self’ seek to overcome this ‘outside’ as such). Levinas, meanwhile, wants to think irremissible pure existing (il y a) in terms of insomnia; in contrast, consciousness seeks to assert itself over the unremitting presence of the ‘there is’ through its capacity for unconsciousness or sleep. This essay seeks to attend to the complexities of a certain ‘fatality of being’ that threatens to sweep away the ‘ego’ as consciousness's capacity to sleep is confronted by the radical vigilance of insomnia and the deep anonymity of the night (Existence and Existents). (shrink)