In digging around looking for material on Blanchot on the way that he explores the limits of philosophy from the perspective of literature, I came across this site.
I was looking for material/reviews on Gerald L. Bruns' Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy but I couldn't find any. However, I did happen upon Ullrich Haase & William Large's Maurice Blanchot.
This quote caught my eye:
"The overarching question of Blanchot's thought is the meaning and possibility of literature. He does not understand literature in terms of a canon; that is to say, a hierarchy of great works to be judged according to their relative value. As we have pointed out, it would be impossible to find detailed textual criticism in Blanchot, even when his work is more traditionally presented in terms of a study of an author."
More philosophically literature expresses the being of language that is prior to communication and so is not primarily about communication. Literature is a search for its original moment of emergence from the silence.
The blub continues:
"..for Blanchot, literature cannot be separated off into a sphere where all that matters are questions of value and good taste, as it touches upon fundamental philosophical questions. This explains why the most important writers for Blanchot are not other literary critics, but, on the one hand, philosophers, especially G. W F. Hegel (1770‑1831), Martin Heidegger (1889‑1976) and Emmanuel Levinas (1906‑95), and, on the other hand, those literary writers such as the Austrian (Czech) novelist Franz Kafka (1883‑1924), and the French Symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme (1842‑98), for whom the question of literature emerges from the activity of writing."
That is about as much as I could make out.
For what it's worth, I think you'd really like the Bruns book, Gary. His use of the word, "anarchy" may be a bit circular, but definitely an Aristotelian-friendly read, (while still calling into question the governence of ontologies...) Maybe I'll try to use it in a post sometime soon)
Posted by: Matt on April 16, 2005 02:38 AM