Abstract

"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,"...