Understanding Blanchot, Understanding Modernism

Description

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, 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. Cover Contents Notes on Contributors Series Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Against Praise of Maurice Blanchot Part 1 Conceptualizing Blanchot 1 Critical First Steps: On Faux Pas 2 Thus Spoke Literature 3 Absolute Modernism and The Space of Literature 4 Writing the Future: Blanchot’s Le Livre à venir 5 Literature Outside the Law: Blanchot’s The Infinite Conversation 6 “Exacerbating the Self-Critical Tendency”: Ethics and Critique in Le pas au-delà Part 2 Blanchot and Aesthetics 7 Nescio Vos: The Pathos of Unknowing in When the Time Comes 8 Writing as Überfluss: Blanchot’s Reading of Kafka’s Diaries 9 “I Hear My Destiny in the Rustling of an Oak”: Blanchot’s Char 10 Neutral Conditions: Blanchot, Beckett, and the Space of Writing 11 The Look of Nothingness: Blanchot and the Image 12 “The Call of the Anterior”: Blanchot, Lacan, and the Death Drive 13 “Unmade According to His Image,” or, Night for Day: Blanchot and the Blacknesses of Cinema Figure Part 3 Glossary Disaster Fragmentary Writing Community Désoeuvrement The Neuter/The Neutral Passivity Literature Outside Friendship Index