Understanding Blanchot, Understanding Modernism

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Maurice Blanchot occupies a central though still-overlooked position in the Anglo-American reception of 20th-century continental philosophy and literary criticism. On the one hand, his rigorous yet always-playful exchanges with the most challenging figures of the philosophical and literary canons of modernity have led thinkers such as Georges Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault to acknowledge Blanchot as a major influence on the development of literary and philosophical culture after World War II. On the other hand, Blanchots reputation for frustrating readers with his difficult style of thought and writing has resulted in a missed opportunity for leveraging Blanchot in advancing the most essential discussions and debates going on today in the comparative study of literature, philosophy, politics, history, ethics, and art. Blanchots voice is simply too profound, too erudite, and too illuminating of what is at stake at the intersections of these disciplines not to be exercising more of an influence than it has in only a minority of intellectual circles. Understanding Blanchot, Understanding Modernism brings together an international cast of leading and emergent scholars in making the case for precisely what contemporary modernist studies stands to gain from close inspection of Blanchots provocative post-war writings.

Reviews

This indispensable collection of essays reveals how Blanchot, one of the pioneers of French thought, illuminatesand is illuminated bymodernist literature. At once compelling and lucid, Understanding Blanchot, Understanding Modernism offers an irresistible invitation to join this conversation of outstanding scholars enabling us to rethink the juncture between literature and philosophy. * Vivian Liska, Professor of German Literature, University of Antwerp, Belgium, and author of German-Jewish Thought and its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy (2016) *
This absorbing volume of deeply knowledgeable and insightful essays, including original contributions from seasoned commentators of Maurice Blanchot as well as a number of fresh critical voices, covers the full spectrum of his literary, philosophical and political writing. The clear-sighted summaries of some of Blanchot's gnomic 'key terms' is an added bonus. As a result it goes a good deal further than a reassessment of his work in the context of what we might call modernism (since the term itself resonates by its very absence within Blanchot's oeuvre): as we put this book down we are reminded that Blanchot's work represents one of the profoundest meditations of the 20th century, but one which has nonetheless brought us closer to an understanding of the infinite and timeless power of literature itself. * Michael Syrotinski, Marshall Professor of French, University of Glasgow, UK *
Organized in an innovative and instructive format, this illuminating collection spans the entirety of Blanchot's oeuvre, while insisting throughout on the key refrains of passivity, impossibility, forgetfulness, silence, writing and disaster, and thought from the outside that make this oeuvre at once so recognizable and also not one. The sections that transgress the Blanchotian preference against interpretation are particularly riveting. * Eleanor Kaufman, Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French and Francophone Studies. University of California-Los Angeles, USA *

Author Bio

Christopher Langlois is Lecturer of English at Dawson College, Canada, and the author of Samuel Beckett and the Terror of Literature (2017).