the world is not enough

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This article was downloaded by: [New York University] On: 06 December 2014, At: 01:33 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20 The World is Not Enough Leslie Hill Published online: 17 Jun 2010. To cite this article: Leslie Hill (2002) The World is Not Enough, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 7:2, 61-68, DOI: 10.1080/0969725022000046170 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725022000046170 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

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Page 1: The World is Not Enough

This article was downloaded by: [New York University]On: 06 December 2014, At: 01:33Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Angelaki: Journal of theTheoretical HumanitiesPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20

The World is Not EnoughLeslie HillPublished online: 17 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Leslie Hill (2002) The World is Not Enough, Angelaki: Journal of theTheoretical Humanities, 7:2, 61-68, DOI: 10.1080/0969725022000046170

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725022000046170

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressedin this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

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forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Men would like to escape death, what a pecu-liar breed. And some call out: die, die, becausethey would like to escape life. ÒWhat a life,IÕve had enough, I give up.Ó This is pitiful andstrange, and a mistake.

Maurice Blanchot, The Madness of the Day1

Let me begin by recalling etymology.According to the dictionary, the word

disaster, like its French counterpart d�sastre,derives from Latin astrum, meaning: a heavenlybody, coupled with the pejorative prefix dis-or d�s-. Both words date from the sixteenthcentury. The most immediate source is theItalian word disastro, from disastrato, which isan astrological term meaning: Òborn under anunfavourable star.Ó Florio, in 1598, glosses theword as follows: ÒDisastro, disastre, mischance,ill lucke.Ó Whence, as you know, the standardmodern meaning: a great misfortune, a calamityor a catastrophe, a reverse of fortune, a suddenmishap, a ruin, a failure. A total wipe-out, youmight say. An erasure, then, but one that ÒassuchÓ already constitutes a trace, were it not thatwhat is thereby instituted (and effaced) is thevery notion of the Òas such.Ó

Ð DoesnÕt Blanchot specifically warn againstthe lure and allure of the etymon, that Òtrue lit-eral sense of a word according to its originÓ? Forat least two reasons. First, etymology privilegesbeginnings. What counts above all else for anetymologist is the first recorded occurrence of aword, which is taken to imply something bind-ing and truthful about its future destiny. But thehistory of words is shot through with contin-gency, error, chance. The archive is necessarilypartial at best, and the attempt to determine thetrue meaning of a word is always a speculativeenterprise, the result of a protracted labour of

textual excavation and reconstruction. Whichis why, historically, the belief in the truth ofetymology Ð IÕm thinking, for instance, of theGerman Romantics Ð covertly accredits a kindof archaeo-teleological view of thought, culture,nationality, by which the end and the beginningbelong together Ð politically as well as philo-logically.

ThereÕs also a second reason, according toBlanchot, why we should resist the apparent self-evidence of etymology. Etymology not only priv-ileges the origin as an inaugural unveiling oftruth; it also emphasises the supposed self-iden-tity or semantic permanence of a word. It wasrhetoricians and philologists, remember, whofirst claimed to distinguish with authoritybetween the proper and improper usages of

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THE WORLD IS NOTENOUGH

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/02/020061-08 © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd and the Editors of AngelakiDOI: 10.1080/096972502200004617 0

AN GEL AK Ijournal of the theoretical humanitiesvolume 7 number 2 august 2002

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a word. At any event, Blanchot is intenselysuspicious of the appeal to etymology, this Òille-gitimate sister of metaphysics,Ó as one recentnovelist teasingly puts it.2 In particular, it iswhat colours BlanchotÕs sceptical response tothe later Heidegger, for whom, as you know,etymologies Ð even dubious or invented ones Ðwere an important resource for thinking.HeideggerÕs etymologies are often ingenious,Blanchot concedes, but they are also violent.Which is also to say, paradoxically, that the questfor truth is never safe from dogmatism.

Ð But isnÕt the illegitimacy of etymology alsoa recourse against dogmatism? Should your argu-ment not in fact be reversed? In other words,arenÕt etymologies useful precisely because theydocument contingency, error, chance? Not des-tiny, then, but nomadic dispersion. Blanchot maybe suspicious of etymology, but isnÕt his ownappropriation of the word disaster violent in itsown way? As you will be aware, his definition ofthe word offers a rather different perspective onthe core meaning of the term than the standarddictionary. In this respect, it does not seem verydifferent from, say, HeideggerÕs notoriouslyunGreek reimagining of the word aletheia as a-letheia or un-forgetting. For Blanchot disasterisnÕt primarily ill luck, as Florio, for instance, hasit, but rather a separation (dis-) from the stars(astra), which is how it comes to figure in hiswriting as a name for an inescapable breach inthe cosmic order, a fragmentation or dispersionof the horizon, a withdrawal of world and world-liness. IsnÕt this simply to reinvent the word andassign to it a meaning that it simply did not havepreviously? The figure I am most reminded ofhere is Humpty Dumpty: Òwhen I use a word, itmeans just what I choose it to mean Ð neithermore nor less.Ó3

Ð Which is simply to say that violence isinescapable. There is no single gathering togetherof the origin that is not already the result of frac-ture, friction, and fragmentation. Division, dis-tortion, and diversion rule here; the law is not anoriginal positing, but always already enforces rad-ical dispersion Ð which is another name for disas-ter. Admittedly, just like Heidegger, BlanchotdoesnÕt use the word disaster in a vacuum. Thereis a tradition, a legacy, a history of thinking and

writing, even if (or, better, precisely because), asBlanchot puts it, disaster Òtakes care of every-thing [prend soin de tout].Ó BlanchotÕs own wordshere are not simple. Their meaning travels in twodirections, and ÒcareÓ (cura, Sorge) implies a pos-itive as well as a negative, which is to say: neithera positive nor a negative, to the extent that toÒtake careÓ of something means both being atten-tive to it and disposing of it.4 Moreover, the worddisaster is itself already a quotation, and in read-ing it as stellar disruption or sidereal separationBlanchot is explicitly following Mallarm� , who ina poem on the death of Edgar Allan Poe famous-ly and enigmatically describes the writerÕs grave-stone Ð and therefore the poem itself Ð as a Òsternblock here fallen from a mysterious disaster.ÓThis at any rate was Mallarm� Õs own attempt attranslating his own original version of the poemin English. And Mallarm� does not stand alone.Blanchot was also quoting himself, remembering,for instance, a remark from The Work of Fire (asthe late Roger Laporte once pointed out) to theeffect that the stories of Kafka are Òamong thebleakest and the most driven by absolute disasterin the whole of literature.Ó5 BlanchotÕs citing ofthe word disaster confirms the very point youwere making a moment ago: that the history ofwords is indeed inseparable from its necessarycontingencies. Which is also to say, as Blanchotphrases it, that disaster is absolute. Without thatabsoluteness, contingency would not occur at all.And as for Humpty Dumpty, if heÕs indeed rightabout words, even some of the time, this simplyproves he is also wrong, since it is language itselfthat allows him to do with words what he claimsto be doing. If the question indeed is, as HumptyDumpty has it, Òwhich [of me and my words] isto be master,Ó then the answer could not be morestraightforward. It is already contained in the verywords that allow the question to be asked at all.

Ð Maybe so. But you also seem to be implyingthat the word disaster is primarily, if not exclu-sively, a literary allusion. ItÕs hard to see in thatcase how the word can have any use as a concept.We did agree some time ago in this conversationthat we would try to address the implications ofBlanchotÕs thinking of disaster for an under-standing of death as invention: death, that is, asunpredictable, unthinkable futurity.

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Ð Indeed. But are you sure the word meritsbeing called a concept?

Ð It certainly benefits from some kind of titu-lar status as an object or subject of writing. Tocall a book The Writing of the Disaster surelyimplies the author knows what the word means.And BlanchotÕs book abounds in attempts to saywhat disaster is and thereby supply the word withsome identifiable conceptual content. What isnoticeable from my point of view in The Writingof the Disaster is not so much BlanchotÕs per-sonal allegiance to literature, but rather the thor-oughness of his philosophical engagement withHegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, psychoanalysis, lit-erary theory, much else besides.

Ð Appearances, as you know, are sometimesdeceptive. In order to read Blanchot we perhapsneed to recognise that literature and philosophyare also both about something other than con-cepts. At any event, the relationship betweenwriting and disaster is not straightforward. EvenBlanchotÕs title does not translate easily. AnnSmockÕs published version opts for The Writingof the Disaster, but this is only one of severalpossibilities. The book might equally have beencalled in English The Writing of Disaster,Writing Disaster, even Disaster Writing. Thesyntax of BlanchotÕs title is uncertain, and of thetwo terms it cites or recites it is impossible todecide how far the one is the subject or object ofthe other, or to what extent the relationshipbetween the two indicates identity or non-identi-ty or something entirely different. And is disas-ter in the title a specific, determined event, likesome historical catastrophe (and I know there aremany readers who have interpreted the book inthis way)? Or is it something indeterminate, akind of prior condition of impossibility separat-ing everything from its proper realisation? Andwhat should we make of the fact that BlanchotÕstitle Ð as so often happens in Blanchot Ð is itselfa quotation from the text? ÒWhen to write, or notto write makes no difference,Ó we read, Òthenwriting changes Ð whether it takes place or not;this is the writing of the disasterÓ (25; 12; trans-lation modified).

Certainly, the word disaster is given promi-nence by the book because it figures in the title;but writing writes disaster only in so far as it

itself becomes disastrous and thus does not writeat all, in much the same way that disaster isalready a writing that neither occurs nor does notoccur. In speaking of disaster, Blanchot draws onthe idea of devastating misfortune, but disaster inBlanchotÕs usage is not something negative, noris it thematisable in terms of success or failure.What it challenges, one might say, is thematisa-tion itself. In that regard disaster is more akin toa perpetual de-positioning, which marks or re-marks the perplexing condition of possibility andimpossibility of positioning Òas such.Ó At thesame time, disaster here is not a privileged term,any more than the word writing is. Disaster isonly one in a long list or series of terms Ð includ-ing words such as disarray, dissuasion, disorien-tation, deception, disappointment, desolation,distance, and so on Ð each of which bears theimprint of BlanchotÕs own singular idiom, buteach of which, as far as thinking is concerned,has in a sense always already given way to thenext. Disaster, Blanchot tells us, is somethingseparate from thought, but only in so far as it isa name for thought itself. I admit this soundsenigmatic, but words are taken up in BlanchotÕswriting only to be displaced, then abandoned.They are no sooner inscribed than they areeffaced. They are obviously not chosen at ran-dom, but this does not mean they are self-identi-cal concepts.

It is true, as you say, that Blanchot in the bookoffers various definitions or descriptions of dis-aster. ÒDisaster,Ó we are told at one point, Òruinseverything while leaving everything intactÓ (7; 1).On my reading, Blanchot here is making a dou-ble claim. First, that disaster is what permeates,embraces, indeed makes possible the all; but,second, to the extent it does so at all, it exceedsand therefore disposes of the all, which existsonly as a false unity, a simulacrum of itself. Butthis does not mean that disaster is negativityunder another name. It does not give rise toworks, products, or actions. Disaster ghosts thedialectic, but remains irreducible to it. What itnames is rather that which is anterior, posterior,at any event excessive of conceptuality as its verylimit of possibility and impossibility, and whichis characterised by a kind of spectral othernessthat is indeed resistant to any thought at all.

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BlanchotÕs text emphasises this elsewhere on anumber of occasions: disaster, we are told, iswhat remains to be said when everything hasbeen said. Disaster, however, is not melancholy,but futural. It is a thought, Blanchot adds, thatis always at a distance from thought; it is thenameless name for something in thought that isdissuasive of thought itself.

Ð I see now why Blanchot is sometimesaccused of being a negative theologian.

Ð This is a risk Blanchot takes, and the objec-tion is perhaps inevitable given BlanchotÕs pro-ject of thinking the limits of thought or thinkingat the limit of thought Òas such.Ó But to readBlanchotÕs thought of disaster even as a form ofsecularised transcendence is to misconstrue itsstatus, which rather has to do with the challengeof thinking finitude in a radical and uncompro-mising way: without piety.

Ð But are you not simply saying that the con-cept of disaster can only ever be understood as adisaster of the concept? IsnÕt this to fall victim toobscurantism and irrationalism?

Ð Let me suggest the opposite. It is true thatphilosophers have always found it hard to readBlanchot. There are, of course, exceptions:Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze,Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe. É Why is this?Perhaps because the relationship to conceptuali-ty in BlanchotÕs texts is always oblique, defective,improper. There is always something spectral orghost-like about BlanchotÕs relationship with dis-course, by which I mean not only the wayBlanchot in his own writing constantly speaksand thinks through the words of others, fromHšlderlin to Mallarm� to Kafka to Heidegger toLevinas to Beckett and so on, but also the way inwhich in a text like The Writing of the Disasterhis writing repeatedly crosses the border or bor-ders between ÒliteratureÓ and Òphilosophy,Ó trav-elling now one way, now the other. This is not tosay that BlanchotÕs writing is not philosophicallypertinent. On the contrary, his sceptical relation-ship towards philosophy is at one and the sametime profoundly philosophical (scepticism, afterall, is the philosophical gesture par excellence)and profoundly distrustful of all philosophy(Òlanguage,Ó says Levinas, cited by Blanchot, Òisalready scepticismÓ (123; 77; translation modi-

fied)). What this double attitude shows onBlanchotÕs part is not a fascination with theineffable, but an attachment to sobriety andvigilance. These are the qualities Blanchot Ð likeothers Ð finds, for instance, in Hšlderlin or inKafka and they are central to his understandingof literature. Disaster may be a spectral thoughtin Blanchot, but this is because it is a thoughtattentive to radical alterity Ð that otherness whichis neither a presence nor an absence, neither anentity nor an event, but something less tangible,more vague, vacuous even, which might bethought to have something in common with thepossibility of literature, provided we abandon theattempt to autonomise or essentialise literature orthe literary. It is worth remembering in this con-text that Derrida, in Spectres of Marx, beginsprecisely with Blanchot, and with a text byBlanchot written anonymously Ð spectrally Ð byhim at the height of the events of May 1968.What this underlines is that BlanchotÕs commit-ment to the future is no theoretical abstraction.It is a relationship (without relationship) with akind of dangerous imminence that, like disaster,belongs to the future, albeit a future that willnever come to be and cannot therefore be madepresent Ð which is why, by another paradoxicaltwist, the task of thinking disaster, here and now,remains such an urgent one, even if it can onlybe articulated by constant paradox. ÒTo thinkdisaster (if this is possible, and it is not possibleinasmuch as we sense that disaster is thinkingitself),Ó writes Blanchot, Òis no longer to have afuture in which to think itÓ (7; 1; translationmodified).

Ð Let me interrupt at this point. IÕve been lis-tening patiently for some time, but have grownweary of this constant recourse to paradox as amethod of argument. Its cleverness does notimpress me. It turns speech into a self-perpetu-ating discourse. It challenges nothing. All it doesis to generate conformism. Despite what you saida moment ago, does it not reflect a debilitatingpiety, one that functions more as an impedimentto thought than an appeal to vigilant sobriety? Iknow I am not the first to voice this fear, butsurely what Blanchot says about passivity in TheWriting of the Disaster gives the game away. Isthere not some justice in the claim that Blanchot

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is merely a nihilist? IsnÕt there a fascination withmourning, with grief and loss, that expressesitself in an obsessive and unproductive returnto the topic of death and dying? IsnÕt this somuch late twentieth-century culpability? Is whatBlanchot has to say about the Shoah in this con-text, that true and enduring disaster of twentieth-century politics, really adequate as a politicalresponse to extreme evil?

Ð These are serious charges.Ð But necessary ones. Should we not welcome

them? What they show, after all, is that Blanchothas something to say to the times in which we areliving.

Ð Let me continue. One or the other of youclaimed a moment ago that disaster in Blanchotis not simply something negative. But would younot agree that there is a privileged relationshipbetween disaster in Blanchot and the negativitythat is death? Is disaster therefore not simply anew word for that most banal of human realisa-tions, which I agree is a distressing one Ð that weare all going to die, if not today, then tomorrow?

Ð It is possible to say this. But there is noth-ing simple about the experience of death or mor-tality. Death for Blanchot is always susceptible toa perpetual double reading. The point has oftenbeen made, but it still bears some repeating,since what is fundamentally at stake here is rep-etition Òas suchÓ: both as structure and as singu-larity. One should perhaps add that any readingof Blanchot necessarily passes through this point,together with any understanding of what it mightmean to invent death or relate to death. Weshould remember, too, that the article of death Ðarticulus mortis Ð in Blanchot is a point wheretruth is grasped only to the extent that it is simul-taneously lost, and where meaning is simultane-ously articulated and disarticulated, gathered upand dispersed. BlanchotÕs first argument is anorthodox philosophical one, which he takes froma certain reading of Hegel and Heidegger. Death,he says, is what institutes our humanity. But asit does so Ð and this is BlanchotÕs second, moreprovocative, thought Ð death takes away precise-ly what it appears to give us. Death may makehuman labour, history, language, possible, but italso brings us face to face with an experience thatcannot be worked at, related, spoken, or even

experienced. Paradoxically, then, there is nothinghuman about this most human of events. At thevery moment (but this is indeed not a moment intime, more a blinking hiatus that belongs to thetime of the absence of time), at the very momentthat death embodies possibility, it withdraws it.This is why Blanchot, in The Writing of theDisaster, in evident dialogue with Heidegger,describes dying not as the possibility of impossi-bility but as the impossibility of all possibility.Much more could be said about the relationshipbetween the two versions of death or dying inBlanchot. But what is perhaps worth emphasisingin response to your question is that what is beingclaimed here about death is not limited to death.Death is privileged up to a point, but it is onlyone in an extensive series of experiences of theimpossibility of experience. Elsewhere inBlanchot one finds many other instances Ð eachmore singular than the next Ð of the same para-doxical structure, and Blanchot makes analogouspoints about, well, suffering, memory, waiting,literature itself. É Let me add in passing that Iagree with you that we should guard against para-dox, which is not to say we can dispense with it.On the contrary, it is unavoidable. One last point:it is sometimes said that all great thinkers reallyonly ever have one thought at their disposal,which they deploy in a variety of different idiomsin an infinite number of different contexts. Whatdistinguishes Blanchot is not only that he hasfew, if any, concepts, but that he has not one buttwo thoughts, which indeed can never be recon-ciled with one another in any final way, andtherefore reduced to a third.

Ð You also raised the question of nihilism.This, too, is a vast chapter we can only touch onhere. It takes us back to negative theology.Nihilism, too, is an accusation that has been lev-elled at Blanchot in the past, especially withrespect to his literary criticism, if only because ofhis tenacious attempt to think literature as con-testation, as something that by virtue of its essen-tial inessentiality always challenges establishedvalues, of whatever kind. Early on, Blanchotmakes the point against Sartre that writing cannever serve as a vehicle for political or ideologi-cal commitment because it is essentially (i.e.,inessentially) disobedient, and is therefore (as

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Sartre was to discover) more likely to discreditthe values it is given the task of representing inthe world than to translate them into effectiveaction. This is what I take is meant by the chargeof nihilism. Admittedly, Blanchot uses the wordon occasion, albeit guardedly, to address litera-tureÕs corrosive power (or is it impotence?). I amthinking here of a 1963 essay on Louis-Ren� DesFor� tsÕs story Le bavard (a title IÕm tempted totranslate, in distant homage to Beckett, as TheBlatherer), which Blanchot describes as display-ing Òan almost infinite nihilism.Ó6 What thisphrase might mean Ð and arguably each word isimportant here Ð is something we would have toexplore by examining BlanchotÕs engagement inthe 1950s and 1960s with Nietzsche, Heidegger,the question of technology, much else besides.More usually, when used by critics of Blanchot,the word is a term of abuse. One recent writer,Marl� ne Zarader, who is the author of an inter-esting, if short-sighted, book on BlanchotÕs rela-tionship with phenomenology (Hegel, Husserl,Heidegger), was interviewed on the subject ofdeath in Blanchot in a special issue of the maga-zine Ligne de risque, the main (polemical) pointof which was to denounce Blanchot not only asthe ÒEnemy,Ó as the magazineÕs editors, YannickHaennel and Fran� ois Meyronnis, rather fatuous-ly put it, but as Òthe greatest metaphysician inFrance,Ó who by speaking of death as impossibil-ity, turns it into a nihilistic void. In the inter-view, Zarader says this:

What seems to me questionable [in Blanchot]is that, starting from an experience given in lit-erature, and no doubt given only to literature,[Blanchot] would like to transpose it outsideliterature. His mistake, if mistake there is, is inthe slippage from the ÒnightÓ (which is syn-onymous with the domain of literature), to theÒneuter,Ó understood as the realm of absentmeaning. Indeed, with the Òneuter,Ó Blanchotforcibly extracts night from literature andattempts to speak it for itself. And that, tomy mind, is where he lapses into a kindof mystificatory, even nihilistic thinking. Afurther step in the same direction is taken inthe latest writings. With The Writing of theDisaster, nihilism advances more masked thanever, since it feigns ethical care and a moralattitude.7

The claim here, then, seems to be twofold:first, that BlanchotÕs writing is an aestheticismthat generalises what should be restricted to lit-erary experience alone. Second, that the ethicallanguage adopted in The Writing of the Disaster(which derives from a complex engagement withthe work of Levinas) is a sham, culminating in adangerous fascination with the infinity of death,violence, and passivity.

Two comments are worth making in reply.The first is that BlanchotÕs thinking is not an aes-theticism. The Writing of the Disaster is pri-marily a disaster for art and literature them-selves. Blanchot is not an essentialist, but neitheris he a crude anti-essentialist. It is rather that lit-erature in its constitutive limits is illimitable.Disaster is a way of thinking language and writ-ing as infinite finitude. To object that Blanchotextends literary experience beyond its properboundaries is to repeat an age-old philosophicalgesture and to cling to an essentialist and (asreaders of ZaraderÕs book will know) largely phe-nomenological theory of literature. More impor-tantly, it is to miss the point of BlanchotÕs think-ing in The Writing of the Disaster. For in thattext Blanchot is not interested in adding yetanother philosophical theory of ÒliteratureÓ tothe many Ð the too many Ð that already exist, butrather in drawing philosophical conclusions fromthe fact (as Mallarm� first phrased it) that some-thing like ÒliteratureÓ ÒexistsÓ Ð or, more accu-rately, does not exist, to the extent that the cor-rosive power or powerlessness of ÒliteratureÓ orÒwritingÓ derives from the singularly spectral cir-cumstance that it neither exists nor does notexist: ÒIf there is a relation between writing andpassivity,Ó Blanchot replies:

it is because the one and the other suppose theeffacement, or extenuation of the subject: sup-pose a change in time [or tense]: suppose thatbetween being and not being something that isnot accomplished nevertheless occurs [arrive,arrives, comes] as having always already hap-pened [survenu, come about unexpectedly,happen after the event] Ð the unworking of theneuter, the silent breach of the fragmentary.(29Ð30; 14; translation modified)

And let me say, secondly, that it is simply nottrue that Blanchot is the thinker of political or

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ethical passivity. Few writers throughout theirlives have been as passionate about the demandsof the political as Blanchot. Admittedly, there ismuch still to be understood about BlanchotÕspost-war political activities. Let me say merely,at the risk of repeating myself, that BlanchotÕsrelationship to something called ÒpoliticsÓ isnot simple. It is irreducibly double. And thatdoubleness, its disjunctions and injunctions, arethe measure of the extent to which BlanchotÕswriting endeavours to measure up to the immea-surable.

Ð Are you not simply trying to defend politi-cal equivocation? I was struck by BlanchotÕsappeal to the Òsilent breach of the fragmentary.ÓIsnÕt his recourse to the literary fragment a pro-foundly nostalgic gesture, one that suggests aregressive, melancholy relationship with history?

Ð The fragment in Blanchot enjoys a doublestatus. In that respect it manifests (or ratherdoesnÕt manifest) the same logic (if we may usethis word) as death Òitself.Ó On the one hand,yes, the fragment alludes to some kind of spec-tral totality; on the other hand, it inscribes itselfeverywhere as an incisive limit, never to be over-come, forever to be affirmed. What is at issue inthe fragment, however (and the displacementBlanchot effects from the porcupine-like frag-ment to the undecidable fragmentary is crucial-ly relevant here), is not equivocation nor ambi-guity, but (at the risk of repeating myself again)disjunction Ð and injunction. Far from beingmelancholy, the fragment is an appeal to thefuture, which is why, from the late 1950sonwards, what fragmentary writing does forBlanchot is to allow him to rethink, with regardto the irreducible singularity and plurality thatinhabit them, literature, philosophy, literary crit-icism, and politics. Fragmentation functionshere, then, less as a dubious memory of totality,than as a mode of citation and incitement. Youwill recall that the closing pages of The Writingof the Disaster are much exercised, notably inrelation to Kafka and Judaism, by the figure(but is it a figure?) of a messianic coming. Thereis more at stake here than it is possible to say atthe present time, save perhaps to suggest thatthere is a complex, necessarily tenuous threadgathering together, in their very dispersion, not

only what Blanchot calls the fragmentary andthe thought of the neuter, but also BenjaminÕsclaim (with which Blanchot is clearly familiar)that the day of judgement, this youngest of alldays, as German idiom has it, is also the daywhen each and every lived moment in the pastturns into a quotation and thereby responds,as Blanchot might put it, to the demand of thefragmentary.

Ð So why all these words, this pretence of adialogue, if everything is always already a quota-tion?

Ð Because to cite, or recite, is also to speak ofinfinite silence. ÒDisaster is giving, it gives disas-ter: as though it disregarded being and non-beingalike.Ó

Ð In which case no thinking or writing is evercomplete. Writing, like death, may be disastrousnecessity, but let us not lament the fact. It givesus all a responsibility for the future. ÒThinking,withdrawing: disaster is sweetness.Ó

Ð ÒMight disaster in that case not be said to berepetition, the affirmation of the singularity ofthat which is extreme? Disaster or the unverifi-able, the improper.Ó

Ð ÒDisaster without there being experience ofit, that which withdraws from all possibility ofexperience Ð the limit of writing. It bears repeat-ing: disaster de-scribes. Which does not meandisaster, as a force of writing, puts itself beyondthe pale, is beyond writing, is not included in thetext.Ó

Ð You mean the world is a miraculous place.Ð Terrible, too.Ð But the world is not enough.Ð It is already too much.Ð It is all there is Ð all there is.Ð Yes.Ð Mmmmmm.

notes

1 Maurice Blanchot, La folie du jour (Montpellier:Fata Morgana, 1973) 12–13; “The Madness of theDay” in The Station Hill Blanchot Reader, trans. LydiaDavis (New York: Station Hill, 1999) 192; transla-tion modified.

2 Jean Lahougue, Le domaine d’Ana (Seyssel:Champ Vallon, 1998) 16.

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3 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandand Through the Looking-Glass, ed. Roger LancelynGreen (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971) 190.

4 See Maurice Blanchot, L’écriture du désastre(Paris: Gallimard, 1980) 10; The Writing of theDisaster, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: U ofNebraska P, 1995) 3. Subsequent references toBlanchot’s original text and current English trans-lation will be given in the text.

5 Maurice Blanchot, La part du feu (Paris:Gallimard, 1949) 18; The Work of Fire, trans.Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995)10; translation modified.

6 Maurice Blanchot, L’amitié (Paris: Gallimard,1971) 139; Friendship, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg(Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997) 119.

7 See Marlène Zarader, “Le rien, le neutre et lamort,” Ligne de risque 16 (Sept. 2001): 50–54(53–54). The same author’s monograph onBlanchot is entitled L’Être et le neutre: à partir deMaurice Blanchot (Lagrasse: Verdier, 2001).

Leslie HillDepartment of French StudiesUniversity of WarwickCoventry CV4 7ALUKE-mail: [email protected] k

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