The Disappearance of Literature Blanchot, Agamben, and the Writers of the No

by Hillyer, Aaron

• ISBN13: 9781501306808
• ISBN10: 1501306804
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-03-26
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

In this book Aaron Hillyer considers the implications of Maurice Blanchot's strange formulation: "Literature is heading to its essence, which is its disappearance." This quest leads Hillyer to stage a dialogue between the works of Blanchot and Giorgio Agamben. Despite being primary points of reference for literary theory, no significant critical work has examined their "literary" writings together. The Disappearance of Literature initiates this new trajectory through readings of Blanchot's The Unavowable Community and Agamben's The Open, two short books that harbor their most enigmatic writings. A series of related concepts-study, community, mysticism, and friendship-emerges from this pairing, and, Hillyer argues, forms the basis of a new vein of contemporary literature found in the novels and hybrid fictions of Enrique Vila-Matas, Anne Carson, and Cesar Aira.

Author Biography

Aaron Hillyer received his Ph.D from the University of Nebraska in 2011.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Writing of the No
Situation, The Non-Place of the Human,The Shadow and the Antidote, Technology and Resistance, Disappearance, Study

1 - Agamben and Blanchot on Desoeuvrement
The Open, The Sacred and the Profane, Naked Life, Desoeuvrement, Pataphysics, God, The Great Ignorance, The Teacher and the Student, Mysticism and Writing,The Land of the Magi

2 - The (Para-)Ontology of Disappearance
Survival, Bartleby, Inactivity, Image, Resistance of the Object, Invisible Man, Aesthetics, Intransmissibility, Para-Subject, The End of Storytelling, Beyond Good and Evil, Literature as Procedure, Asignifying Word, Mystery, Surprise, Dictator, Gestural Language, Self Slander, "Then the time has come"

3 - The Potential of Study
Survival, The Student Before the Law, The Invisible Door, Study and Resistance, Educative Violence, The Autodidact , The Logic of Sovereignty, Closing the Door of the Law

4 - Toward a Constellation of Literature's Disappearance
Neutral Power, Near-death, Neuter, Void, Philopoesis, Linguistic Absolute, Collectivity, Superimposition, Dreams, De-quilting, Light, Awakening, Blindness, With What Words?

5 - Anne Carson and the Study of Mysticism
Pan Tolmeton, The Dance of Jealousy, Decreation, The FarNear

6 - Enrique Vila-Matas and the Self-Study of Writing
Irony, Style, Happiness

7 - Threshold: The Friendship of Literature
Friendship, That Light

Notes

Index