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January 9, 2006
Maurice Blancht's The Writing of the Disaster is a philosophical inquiry into the Holocaust that seeks to understand the significance and meaning of the Holocaust independent from the empirical fact of its historical occurrence.
The holocaust, the absolute event of history---which is a date in history-- that utter-burn where all history took fire, where the movement of Meaning was swallowed up, where the gift, which knows nothing of forgiveness or of consent, shattered without giving place to any-thing that can be affirmed, that can be denied
How can thought be made the keeper of the holocaust where all was lost, including guardian thought? (WD 47)
Jennifer Yusin says that Blanchot's claim that the movement of Meaning was swallowed up suggests the absence of meaning. What Blanchot suggests, however, is not that meaning was first present and then erased throughout the course of the Holocaust, but rather that meaning was absent, in the first place, from the event of the Holocaust.
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