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Uses the concept of the poetic fragment to draw connections between romantic poetry and modern literature and literary theory. ... Read more

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This book reveals the basic tenets of what may be called a "poetics of singularity" in Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, and the strange late essays of Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Clark explores a series of powerful questions concerning basic features of Western thought: the nature of understanding, Kierkegaard's "singular individual," the uniqueness of historical testimony, and the nature of community.

Features of Poetics of Singularity:
• Identifies a forceful tradition of twentieth-century poetics -- which differs from received ideas of deconstruction
• Makes available in English previously untranslated material by Heidegger and Gadamer and discusses relatively unknown texts by Blanchot and recent work by Derrida

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Two of the most creative and compelling thinkers of the second half of the 20th century, Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas, first encountered each other in the 1920s and began a friendship that was to span over seven decades. Their subsequent exchange of ideas and shared concerns, as well as their significant differences and influence on one another, have profound implications for the work of each. This work represents the most sustained analysis to date of the intersections of structure and content in Blanchot and Levinas's most representative and complex works ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Cogent, intelligent study
Professor Toumayan has an excellent understanding of the radical heteronomy which conditions the "latent birth" of the separate being or entity. He also has a profound understanding of the contaminated temporality which must accompany such a process. "In order to write," he quotes Maurice Blanchot, "one must already have written." Finally, and most impressively, Professor Toumayan understands the complete absence of power, initiative, accomplishment in this universe of differentiation. I have never seen a scholar more comfortable with these concepts. Toumayan articulates them effortlessly, as though he was fed them with his mother's milk.

I think he is quite right to invoke Hegel and Heidegger, who were key influences on both Blanchot and Levinas. All the European philosophers of the time felt they had to take a position toward the Germans.

For myself, I don't think the lengthy lucubrations about death and the cadaver are helpful. This also was a fad of the time. Death won't enter the discourse. It's better to leave it alone.

Meanwhile, Toumayan makes certain semantic errors which invite misunderstanding. For instance, he speaks of the "work" when he means "oeuvre" in the Blanchotian sense. This is misleading. "Oeuvre" does not mean "work," in fact "oeuvre" means the opposite of "work". He also speaks of the "tale" when he should say "récit." A récit is not a tale, it is a process, an event, which shares the existence/non-existence, the problematic "insistence" of the oeuvre. Thirdly, most damagingly, he speaks of "relation" as the rapport between entities or subjects, thus allowing the deManians to slither in through the back door.He should have said something like "intrication." I think he does say "involvement," (a good etymological choice) sometimes. (I hope he isn't doing all this as a compromise with prevailing critical trends. That wouldn't be good, because prevailing critical trends are moronic.)

His abbreviations are not helpful, because some of them refer to French titles and others to English translations. It would have been better to give the whole title in parentheses.

I would like to excoriate him for drawing philosophical conclusions from literary images, which is strictly verboten for any serious thinker, but the fact is that Thomas l'obscur is so meditative in its very prose that his conclusions are more or less right. I do reproach him for giving us the lines from Thomas l'obscur in English, which prevents us from really seeing what he is getting at.

One of the smartest things he does -- or perhaps it's Blanchot and Levinas who give him his cue -- is to account for how the differential undercurrent which sabotages all forms of totalization, comprehension etc. also creates the objective world we know. If he didn't make this clear, the whole argument would sound like, in his words, "obscurantism," or as the French say, "parler pour ne rien dire."

In quoting Blanchot's explanation of how the image creates classical art, Toumayan is doing the right thing. The philosophy of difference is not a philosophy of nothingness or meaninglessness: it is a philosophy that respects the real world and wants to understand it.

For every il y a, every other night, there are instances in the real world that we all feel and experience every day. This is why a philosophy of difference is relevant. Indeed, urgently needed. The destruction and genocide we see around us are consequences of the blind faith in power, action, accomplishment, totalization, that have driven the human being to the brink of extinction.

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'Another of Blanchot's almost-fictions ...throwing into deliciously baffling high relief the enigmatic condition of a man and woman alone in a sparsely furnished hotel room who try to remember what has happened to bring them there as they apprehensively await whatever will happen next. Their reserved confusion and quiet desperation eventually impress upon them (and us) the realization that imagination (or, if you will, writing) can create reality - and offer the paradoxical solace that seems to rest at the heart of Blanchot's writing: the sense that even language that expresses meaninglessness can't help but contain and, therefore, convey meaning' - "Kirkus".'This absolutely first-rate translation will not only make Blanchot accessible to many new readers but will also encourage Blanchot scholars and students to reconsider everything they thought they knew about L'Attente l'oubli...This book should be required reading, period' - "Choice". '"Awaiting Oblivion" is one of [Blanchot's] crowning works ...a penetrating reflection upon human nature, language, and literature' - "Translation Review". 'Blanchot is a terrifying writer' - Review of "Contemporary Fiction".Maurice Blanchot has been for a half century one of France's leading authors of fiction and theory. Two of his most ambitious nonfiction works, "The Space of Literature" and "The Writing of the Disaster", are also available from the University of Nebraska Press, as is "The Most High", his third novel. John Gregg is the author of "Maurice Blanchot and the Literature of Transgression". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A foray into the deepest heart of relationships
This book is a foray into the deepest heart of relationships, and leaves one unguarded (as few other books have attained) to experience the letting-go that is so difficult for any of us to do, both as singular individuals and in our relationships with our significant others. This *experience* of letting-go is remarkably accessible in this book, and is remarkable for that fact alone, as few books can produce this sort of insight into the human condition of the notion of property, both in our relationships and in our daily experiences. It is an unsettling, uncanny book that stays with you after you have read it. Highly recommended.

Openings, not closings...
The text is an intimate engagment with a question of relation.Perhaps it is not in anyone's (including Blanchot's...) interest to somehow portray a more "accurate" picture of the world, to write a "better" narrative or récit, rather, perhaps there is somethingmore fundamental at stake which places even the practice of reading intoquestion. And if this is at all true, it one of the foremost reasons whyI hold almost all of Blanchot's texts in the highest regard.

watching one's wait
Imagine yourself a leading French theorist: here is a recipe for that troublesome new 'recits'- return to an earlier work (in this case, his first, 'Death Sentence'/L'arrete de Mort')- find a germane incident within that book- rip those pages out.Now set up two charatcters in a situation that mirrors the originary fictional incident- have those two characters try to analyze the event's 'implication' from within the same setting.Digress frequently.Sound a little too Stoppardian for you?Not sure you'll find the Godot-like intertextual rib-tickles very compelling?For fiction his short-stories 'The last word', or 'The idyll' are easily a thousand nights more lucid; for heavy theory, 'The Writing of Disaster' is detonative.This work sadly's just oblivious... ... Read more

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Dir¡ase que la desgracia presta al sujeto y a la idea misma de subjetividad aquello que Cueto denomina, con toda justeza, el espejo vano: la no?bru¤ida superficie en la que el yo ha cesado de reflejarse y en la que, a£n m s, no queda siquiera un solo signo que le permita afirmar como propia su desaparici¢n ?Yo no tengo acceso a ella, ni a m¡ en ella, ni a ella en m¡?. De all¡ que la desgracia no sea, en esencia, angustia o desesperaci¢n, afecci¢n de un esp¡ritu que huyera del mundo tan s¢lo para recogerse en sus l¡mites y so¤ar, all¡, su retorno. Lejos de ser el soporte de una cierta experiencia o el testigo de alg£n hecho exterior, el yo es, siempre ahora y aqu¡, el afuera de la desgracia. La desgracia como lo inaccesible del afuera, la desgracia como nfasis imperceptible de una exterioridad en la que el lenguaje mismo habla sin poder hablar, sin disponer del poder de la palabra. Se comprender  hasta qu punto el lugar de la desgracia es as¡, como lo es para Blanchot, el sitio de la literatura. Si el escritor es quien escribe a partir de la ausencia de los dem s y aun de s¡ mismo, esta ausencia sin medida, esta soledad inaudita har  que el escribir pueda pensarse fundamentalmente como un pasar de un habla a otra. No se trata, desde luego, de admitir simplemente la pluralidad dada del habla ?pluralidad dialctica, pluralidad de los poderes del discursosino de exigir al habla una alteridad cuyo sentido ella misma desconoce. Es en virtud de la necesidad de un hablaotra, de un hablar doblemente ?necesidad desnuda, necesidad sin poder, sin imperioque la obra de Maurice Blanchot ha reclamado la atenci¢n del autor. Y esto no parece significar otra cosa que haber le¡do esa obra, curiosamente, desde la profunda experiencia de aquello hacia lo cual se destina la escritura: un habla silenciosa que no podemos no seguir denominando poes¡a. ... Read more

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Blanchot provides a compelling insight into one of the key figures in the development of postmodern thought. Although Blanchot's work is characterised by a fragmentary and complex style, Leslie Hill introduces clearly and accessibly the key themes in his work. He shows how Blanchot questions the very existence of philosophy and literature and how we may distinguish between them, stresses the importance of his political writings and the relationship between writing and history that characterised Blanchot's later work; and considers the relationship between Blanchot and key figures such as Emmanuel Levinas and Georges Bataille and how this impacted on his work.
Placing Blanchot at the centre stage of writing in the twentieth century, Blanchot also sheds new light on Blanchot's political activities before and after the Second World War. This accessible introduction to Blanchot's thought also includes one of the most comprehensive bibliographies of his writings of the last twenty years. ... Read more

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The Itinerary at the Edge
Why is it that an important book, out since 1997, has no Amazon reviews?This lack is testament to the difficult world Hill has attempted to traverse:the world at the edge of the horizon, as demarcated by Maurice Blanchot. Hill spans this horizon with great compassion, sincerity and acuity, making this a most reliable, indeed, inspiring guide to his subject. We will need many commentaries, engagements and reflections on Blanchot in order fully join him at the edge, and Hill will always be among the most seminal of those.Hill's great excursion will long be located at the center.It will not be the commentary with which we begin, but it will be the one we use as a touchstone for our own studies.
"Blanchot, Extreme Contemporary," is framed by Blanchot's political involvements before and after WWII. Hill is responding to commentators who, not able to fully engage an author of the stature of Blanchot, seek to denigrate him by picking at political involvements-- as though their own involvements are somehow exemplary (go figure). Hill deeply comprehends Blanchot's "politics" as exemplifying a journey of a great spirit, and not the knee-jerk reflexes of a naive, self-absorbed and ambitious political hack (which one might say in order to forgive Heidegger).
But in between these bookend considerations Hill vaults over an arch of developing thought that includes, but does not fixate on key Blanchot expressions, such as "the unexperienced experience," the "neuter" and "friendship. It would be enough to grapple with Blanchot's notion of the impossibility of dying, no less engage these other startling thoughts;but Hill does not get snagged there.(For a dramatic interpretation of Blanchot's personal encounter with the impossibility of dying, by all means read Derrida's meditation, "Demeure," which accompanies Blanchot's text, "The Instant of My Death.")
Hill navigates through the Blanchot corpus with affection and deep penetration. He accomplishes this by citing Blanchot's lifelong friendship with Levinas, and his other loyalties, to Holderlin, Kafka, Mallarme, Rilke, Hegel, Heidegger Rene Char and Jean-Luc Nancy, among others.Elsewhere I have commented on Blanchot's method of abiding in friendship in order to take an even more adventurous journey.Hill reflects that sense, suffusing the book with warmth, even heat (in Blanchot, we are dealing with "works of fire," after all).In fidelity to Blanchot's setting out to engender a "plural speech" that welcomes as it extends and reframes another's speech,Hill succeeds completely.
Hill's discussions of Blanchot's fiction, especially, Death Sentence, help readers find their own ways through this part of Blanchot's corpus, while highlighting the fictive elements of Blanchot's critical and philosophical works.
At the end of the book, Hill writes of "Blanchot" -- "an empty name that coincides with its own multiplicity and endless fragmentation," True.And Hill has populated that vast horizon with strikes and flashes, friendships and engagements of insight that can connect us to Blanchot, if we are willing.
"Yes."
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A timely collection of essays, the first to be published in English on the work of Maurice Blanchot. One of the major thinkers of this century, Blanchot--a contemporary of Bataille and Levinas, whose work has influenced Derrida and Foucault, among others--demonstrates the radical philosophical import of literature and has renewed the debate over the ontological and ethical questions raised by works of art.

Commentators consider Blanchot from a variety of perspectives, including: Simon Critchley on Blanchot's "Il y a"; Rodolfe Gasche on the "Null Space of Literature"; Gillian Rose on death; a previously unpublished letter by Blanchot explaining his political position in the 1930s; Jeffrey Mehlman's "Pour Sainte Beuve" and Roger Laporte on Blanchot today. This is a crucial selection on a philosopher who commands widespread, fervent interest from students of philosophy, literature and French studies.

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Letras Libres, published by Editorial Vuelta, S.A. de C.V. on April 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1790 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Maurice Blanchot: una necrológica. (Filosofía).(Entrevista)
Author: Ernesto Hernández Busto
Publication: Letras Libres (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2003
Publisher: Editorial Vuelta, S.A. de C.V.
Volume: 5Issue: 52Page: 86(3)

Article Type: Entrevista

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Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), the French writer andnovelist, is one of the most important figures inpost-war French literature and philosophy. In herstudy, Outi Alanko-Kahiluoto figures out Blanchot?sposition and originality in the field ofphenomenology. The primary context is the post-wardiscussion of the relation between seeing andthinking in France, and particularly the discussionof the conditions of non-violent vision and language. Blanchot?s originality in, and contribution to, thediscussion about the violence of vision and languageis found in his answer to the question of how toapproach the other by avoiding the ?worst violence?.Blanchot generates an account of language which,since it neither negates nor creates Being, isbeyond the metaphysical opposition between Being andnon-Being. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from The Modern Language Review, published by Modern Humanities Research Association on January 1, 1999. The length of the article is 517 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Maurice Blanchot: The Demand of Writing.(Review)(Brief Article)
Author: Paul Hegarty
Publication: The Modern Language Review (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1999
Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association
Volume: 94Issue: 1Page: 209(2)

Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article

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