Abstract
Under the aegis of Bataille, Blanchot in his turn criticizes the dialectic process, whose final and totalizing stage he calls into question. The passion of negative thought brings man to reiterate his questioning indefinitely, against all plenitude. Beyond the absolute, it pushes him toward an ‘outside the whole’ which is neither death nor life and where nothing is ever resolved. The limit-experience thus becomes a paradoxical experience, which is representative of the Blanchotian universe: negation without negation; death impossible to die; dispossessed belonging.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. Hegel (2018: 38). ‘But consciousness is for itself its own concept, thereby immediately the advance beyond what is limited and, since what is thus limited belongs to it, beyond itself.’
- 2.
The expression is from Georges Bataille, in his ‘Letter to X,’ dated December 6, 1937 (1997b: 296). The author adds: ‘I would not be able to define myself more precisely.’
- 3.
The term is understood in an anthropological, not its orthodox, sense, but in keeping with the theme of the analysis.
- 4.
Note that on the very same page Blanchot warns against the attractions of the mystical.
- 5.
I can only refer the reader here to the wonderful book by Jacques Le Brun (2002: 187 and 189).
- 6.
- 7.
The expression is from Saint François de Sales (Le Brun 2002: 161).
- 8.
‘Pure love […] is a priest who is never without sacrifice, and who is never satisfied until he has stripped away everything: I say EVERYTHING without exception […]’ (Madame Guyon, cited in Le Brun 2002: 159).
- 9.
Marlène Zarader makes night, understood in Blanchot’s sense, the focal point of current philosophy:
If Blanchot shares with many of his contemporaries the will to do the night justice, and if he supposes, as they do, that this justice will only be done by a thought at least open to an ‘otherwise than being,’ he is, doubtless, the one who has best judged what this openness will require, the one above all, who has sought to consummate the sacrifice: to be done with being, and the security it offers, to renounce meaning itself. (2001: 33)
- 10.
Fénelon here makes the impossible supposition ‘that God wanted to annihilate [his] soul at the moment when it detached itself from [his] body’ (1983a: 661). ‘Allowing these very possible suppositions, there is no more promise, either of recompense, or of beatitude, or of hope in a future life’ (1983a: 662).
- 11.
We will meet this expression of Lacan’s again in the next chapter, which deals with his work.
- 12.
From the Wolfgang Borchert play Draussen vor der Tür, 1947.
- 13.
The end of this chapter draws on an earlier essay by Blanchot, taken from the same collection: ‘The great refusal’ (Blanchot 1993: 33–49).
- 14.
Cf. G.W.F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit Chap. A, 1: ‘Sensory certainty: the This and my view of the This’. [Translator’s note: La certitude sensible ou le ceci et ma visée du ceci. This was Jean Hyppolite’s translation (Hegel 1966) of Hegel’s ‘Die sinnliche Gewissheit oder das Diese und das Meinen.’ Hyppolite in his translation aimed to underscore the subjective dimension in this first form of consciousness, expressed in Hegel’s substantivized verb ‘Meinen’ (think/mean/intend). Hegel (2018: 43) translates the phrase as ‘Sensory Certainty: The This and Meaning.’]
- 15.
Cf. Blanchot (1993: 37). ‘the Sacred is “immediate” presence. It is this body that passes, is pursued and nearly grasped even unto death by Baudelaire.’
- 16.
[Translator’s note: I have departed here from the translation in Bataille (1988).]
- 17.
‘To me this world, the planet, the starry sky are just a grave’ (Bataille 1988: 12).
- 18.
[Translator’s note: I have departed here from the translation in Bataille (1988).]
- 19.
Levinas himself cites the relationship between this concept of his and the Blanchotian neutral: ‘It is a theme I have found in Maurice Blanchot, even though he does not speak of the “there is” but of the “neutral” or the “outside ”’ (Levinas 1985: 49).
- 20.
‘There is [Il y a]’ translates the German ‘Es gibt.’ Cf. Heidegger (1990: 197). ‘We do not say: “Being is,” “time is”—but “there is Being,” and “there is time.”’
- 21.
‘[…] that resistance against anonymous and fateful being’ (Levinas 2004: 80).
- 22.
It is in this sense that Levinas himself comments on Blanchot: ‘It seems that for him it is impossible to escape from this maddening, obsessive situation’ (1985: 50).
- 23.
Marlène Zarader (2001: 17) underlines the exemplary character of Blanchot’s efforts in this also: ‘Up until not so long ago, philosophy’s ambition was to grasp that which is, to align itself as closely as possible with all presence. Today, it wants to accept that which hides, to approach the abyss, to attest to that which is fated to escape it.’
- 24.
‘In the actual attempt to say it [the bit of paper], it would therefore rot away’ (Hegel 2018: 48).
- 25.
Blanchot cites here the epigraph to Yves Bonnefoy’s collection of essays L’Improbable (cf. Bonnefoy 1983).
- 26.
The expression is from Jean-Luc Nancy (1997: 56).
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Rojtman, B. (2020). The Desire for Indifference: Maurice Blanchot. In: The Fascination with Death in Contemporary French Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47322-8_5
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