After Blanchot Literature, Criticism, Philosophy

by Hill, Leslie; Nelson, Brian; Vardoulakis, Dimitris

• ISBN13: 9780874139464
• ISBN10: 0874139465
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-14
• Publisher: Monash Romance Studies

Summary

What does it mean to come after Blanchot? Three things, at least. First, it is to recognise that it is no longer possible to believe in an essentialist determination of literary discourse or of aesthetic experience. All this has disappeared; and there is no way back. Second, there is the question of history. What is Blanchot's legacy to us, his readers? Any name, however, irreplaceably singular, is always already preceded, limited, challenged even, by the abiding anonymity of the person, animal, or thing it claims to name. Every name is necessarily impersonal, anonymous, other. Blanchot "after Blanchot," then, can best he understood in the sense of that which is "according to Blanchot"--and that is nothing other than the infinite process of reading and rereading Blanchot: without end. Here, a third meaning to the phrase "after Blanchot" comes into view. For if we come after Blanchot, it is surely because Blanchot is still before us, still in front, still in the future, still to come.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	vii
After Blanchot	1	(12)
Leslie Hill
The Movements of the Neuter	13	(22)
Christophe Bident
``The profound reserve''	35	(23)
Kevin Hart
``Affirmation without precedent'': Maurice Blanchot and Criticism Today	58	(22)
Leslie Hill
An Idyll?	80	(20)
Michael Holland
Blanchot's ``The Indestructible''	100	(23)
Christopher Fynsk
A Matter of Life and Death: Reading Materiality in Blanchot and de Man	123	(14)
Hector Kollias
Blanchot, Reader of Baudelaire: ``Baudelaire's Failure''	137	(12)
Alain Toumayan
Between Heidegger and Holderlin: The ``Sacred'' Speech of Maurice Blanchot	149	(19)
Robert Savage
``What terrifying complicity'': Jean Paul as Collocutor in Death Sentence	168	(21)
Dimitris Vardoulakis
Figures of the Work: Blanchot and the Space of Literature	189	(16)
Caroline Sheaffer-Jones
``The absolutely dark moment of the plot'': Blanchot's Abraham	205	(16)
Chris Danta
Midnight, or the Inertia of Being	221	(17)
Eleanor Kaufman
Literature of Indistinction: Blanchot and Caproni	238	(19)
Paolo Bartoloni
White Work	257	(13)
Elizabeth Presa
Contributors	270	(3)
Index	273