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Full Description
Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) was one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His novels, shorter narratives, literary criticism, and fragmentary texts exercised enormous influence over several generations of writers, artists, and philosophers. In works such as Thomas the Obscure, The Instant of my Death, The Writing of the Disaster, The Unavowable Community, Blanchot produced some of the most incisive statements of what it meant to experience the traumas and turmoils of the twentieth century.
As a journalist and political activist, Blanchot had a public side that coexisted uneasily with an inclination to secrecy, a refusal of interviews and photographs, and a reputation for mysteriousness and seclusion. These public and private Blanchots came together in complicated ways at some of the twentieth century's most momentous occasions. He was among the public intellectuals participating in the May '68 revolution in Paris and helped organize opposition to the Algerian war. During World War II, he found himself moments away from being executed by the Nazis. More controversially, he had been active in far-right circles in the '30s.
Now translated into English, Christophe Bident's magisterial, scrupulous, much-praised critical biography provides the first full-length account of Blanchot's itinerary, drawing on unpublished letters and on interviews with the writer's close friends. But the book is both a biography and far more. Beyond filling out a life famous for its obscurity, Bident's book will transform the way readers of Blanchot respond to this major intellectual figure by offering a genealogy of his thought, a distinctive trajectory that is at once imaginative and speculative, at once aligned with literary modernity and a close companion and friend to philosophy.
The book is also a historical work, unpacking the 'transformation of convictions' of an author who moved from the far-right in the 1930s to the far-left in the 1950s and after. Bident's extensive archival research explores the complex ways that Blanchot's work enters into engagement with his contemporaries, making the book also a portrait of the circles in which he moved, which included friends such as Georges Bataille, Marguerite Duras, Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.
Finally, the book traces the strong links between Blanchot's life and an oeuvre that nonetheless aspires to anonymity. Ultimately, Bident shows how Blanchot's life itself becomes an oeuvre—becomes a literature that bears the traces of that life secretly. In its even-handed appraisal, Bident's sophisticated reading of Blanchot's life together with his work offers a much-needed corrective to the range of cruder accounts, whether from Blanchot's detractors or from his champions, of a life too easily sensationalized.
This definitive biography of a seminal figure of our time will be essential reading for anyone concerned with twentieth-century literature, thought, culture, and politics.
Contents
Translator's Note ix
Preface xi
Part I 1907-1923
1. Blanchot of Quain: Genealogy, Birth, Childhood (1907-1918) 3
2. Music and Family Memory: Marguerite Blanchot in Chalon (1920s) 10
3. The Fedora of Death: Illness (1922-1923) 13
Part II 1920s-1940
4. The Walking Stick with the Silver Pommel: The University of Strasbourg (1920s) 21
5. A Flash in the Darkness: Meeting Emmanuel Levinas (1925-1930) 24
6. There Is: Philosophical Apprenticeship (1927-1930) 29
7. Aligning One's Convictions: Paris and Far-Right Circles (1930s) 34
8. "Mahatma Gandhi": A First Text by Blanchot (1931) 41
9. Refusal, I. The Revolution of Spirit: La Revue Française, Réaction, and La Revue du Siècle (1931-1934) 44
10. Journalist, Opponent of Hitler, National- Revolutionary: Le Journal des Débats, Le Rempart, Aux Écoutes, and La Revue du Vingtième Siècle (1931-1935) 51
11. The Escalation of Rhetoric: The Launch of Combat (1936) 62
12. Terrorism as a Method of Public Safety: Combat ( July-December 1936) 67
13. Patriotism's Breaking Point: L'Insurgé (1937) 71
14. These Events Happened to Me in 1937: Death Sentences (1937-1938) 82
15. On the Transformation of Convictions: A Journalist of the Far Right (1930s) 88
16. From Revolution to Literature: Literary Criticism (1930s) 91
17. Murderous Omens of Times to Come—Writing the Récits:
"The Last Word" and "The Idyll" (1935-1936) 101
18. Night Freely Recircled, Which Plays Us: Thomas the Obscure (1932-1940) 111
Part III 1940 -1949
19. The Universe Is to Be Found in Night: Resistance (1940-1944) 121
20. Using Vichy against Vichy: Jeune France (1941-1942) 127
21. Admiration and Agreement: Meeting Georges Bataille (1940-1943) 135
22. In the Name of the Other: Literary Chronicles at the Journal des Débats (1941-1944) 145
23. A True Writer Has Appeared: The Publication and Reception of Thomas the Obscure (1941-1942) 160
24. Lift This Fog Which Is Already of the Dawn: The Publication of Aminadab (1942) 163
25. Writers Who Have Given Too Much to the Present: NRF Circles (1941-1942) 170
26. From Anguish to Language: The Publication of Faux pas (1943) 178
27. The Prisoner of the Eyes That Capture Him: Quain (Summer 1944) 182
28. The Disenchantment of the Community: Editorial Activity after Liberation (1944 -1946) 187
29. The Year of Criticism: L'Arche, Les Temps Modernes, and Critique (1946) 192
30. Respecting Scandal: Literary Criticism (1945-1948) 195
31. The Black Stain: Writing The Most High (1946-1947) 208
32. The Passion of Silence: Denise Rollin (1940s) 219
33. The Mediterranean Sojourn: The Writing of the Night (1947) 225
34. Something Inflexible: The Madness of the Day, a New Status for Speech (1947-1949) 229
35. The Turn of the Screw: The Second Version of Thomas the Obscure (1947-1948) 232
36. The Authority of Friendship: The Completion of Death Sentence (1947-1948) 235
37. Quarrels in the Literary World: Publication and Reception (1948-1949) 239
Part IV 1949-1959
38. Invisible Partner: Èze, Withdrawal (1949-1957) 245
39. The Essential Solitude: Writing the Récits (1949-1953) 248
40. The Radiance of a Blind Power: When the Time Comes (1949-1951) 254
41. Are You Writing, Are You Writing Even Now? The One Who Was Standing Apart from Me (1951-1953) 261
42. The Critical Detour: A Few Articles of Literary Criticism (1950-1951) 266
43. The Author in Reverse: The Birth of The Space of Literature (1951-1953) 271
44. Always Already (The Poetic and Political Interruption of Thought):
Toward The Book to Come (1953-1958) 280
45. Of an Amazing Lightness: The Last Man (1953-1957) 290
46. Grace, Strength, Gentleness: Meeting Robert Antelme (1958) 297
47. In the Gaze of Fascination: The Return to Paris (1957-1958) 301
48. Refusal, II. In the Name of the Anonymous: The 14 Juillet Project (1958-1959) 303
Part V 1960 -1968
49. Note That I Say "Right" and Not "Duty": The Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the Algerian War (1960) 315
50. Invisible Partners: The Project for the International Review (1960-1965) 324
51. Characters in Thought: How Is Friendship Possible? (1958-1971) 336
52. Act in Such a Way That I Can Speak to You: Awaiting Oblivion (1957-1962) 342
53. The Thought of the Neuter: Literary and Philosophical Criticism—the Entretien and
the Fragment (1959-1969) 349
54. A First Homage: The Special Issue of Critique (1966) 362
55. Between Two Forms of the Unavowable: The Beaufret Affair (1967-1968) 370
56. The Far Side of Fear: Political Disillusionment (May 1968) 375
Part VI 1969-1997
57. Life Outside: The Step Not Beyond, a Journal Written in the Neuter (1969-1973) 389
58. Friendship in Disaster: Distance, Disappearance (1974 -1978) 403
59. The Last Book: The Writing of the Disaster (1974 -1980) 406
60. Forming the Myth: Readings and Nonreadings (1969-1979) 416
61. Making the Secret Uncomfortable: Blanchot's Readability and Visibility (1979-1997) 424
62. With This Break in History Stuck in One's Throat: The Unavowable Community (1982-1983) 435
63. Even a Few Steps Take Time: Literature and Witnessing (1983-1997) 445
Amor: Blanchot since 2003 465
John McKeane
Acknowledgments 479
Notes 481
Bibliography 599
Index 605
