Maurice Blanchot

French writer, philosopher, and literary critic (22 September 1907 – 20 February 2003; cremated 24 February 2003). Author of Thomas l'obscur (1941), Aminadab (1942), Le Très-Haut (1948), La part du feu (1949), L'espace littéraire (1955), Le livre à venir (1959), L'attente l'oubli (1962), L'entretien infini (1969), Le pas au-delà (1973), L'écriture du désastre (1980), among many other works. A central figure of twentieth-century French intellectual life and a lifelong intimate friend and correspondent of Levinas (they met at the University of Strasbourg in 1925) and of Derrida. On the wiki, Blanchot enters via *The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II* (2002–2003), where his cremation falls between sessions 6 and 7 (24 Feb 2003, four days after he died on 20 Feb), giving the entire Session 7 its tone of mourning and survivance.

Key Points

  • Blanchot's cremation occurs during the seminar. Maurice Blanchot died 20 February 2003 and was cremated 24 February 2003 — between BS-II's S6 (12 Feb 2003, on cremation) and S7 (26 Feb 2003, in mourning). The seminar's analysis of inhumation vs. cremation (S5–S6) was structurally addressed to Blanchot, who had chosen cremation. S7 opens with Derrida's "I posthume as I breathe" (re-citing Circumfession) and proceeds through a sustained Blanchot reading. The seminar is partly an extended elegy.
  • The neutre as Blanchot's master-concept. Blanchot's le neutre (the neuter) names the structural "between" that is neither Being nor beings, neither positive nor negative, neither subject nor object — a structural site of writing-after-the-end-of-the-world. In BS-II S7 (pp. 188–192), Derrida positions the neutre as the structural predecessor of Heidegger's *Walten* (S9). Heidegger's Walten der Differenz (in Identität und Differenz 1957) is, on Derrida's reading, the secret continuation of Blanchot's neutre — but with the violence-vocabulary Blanchot's silence-poetics would refuse. The seminar's last weeks effectively re-write Blanchot in Heidegger's idiom.
  • "Buried alive" as the symbol of fiction itself. From The Last One to Speak, L'attente l'oubli, Le pas au-delà: Blanchot's persistent figure is the one buried alive, the living-dead whose only condition is to be at once unborn-still and not-yet-dead. Derrida (BS-II S7 pp. 182–84): "Such is the last ambiguity: it vanishes if it awakens; it perishes if it comes to light. Its condition is to be buried alive." This binds Robinson Crusoe's foundational fear (swallow'd up alive, bury'd alive) to a deeper structural claim about literature's mode of being — and to survivance as the trace that "begins with survival."
  • The "phantom of the event." Blanchot's When the Time Comes names the structure Derrida thematizes in BS-II S7 (p. 185): the "phantasm of the event ... event of the phantasm." There is no pure realist event — every event arrives via a phantasmatic structure; every phantasm has real psychic / political effects. The "logic of the phantasm ... resists the logos."
  • "No one bears witness for the witness" (Celan + Blanchot). Cited via Celan's "Aschenglorie" ("ASHGLORY behind your shaken-knotted hands at the threeway / ... / No one / bears witness for the / witness") and via Blanchot. The line gives S7 its ashes/glory register and binds the seminar's mourning to the Auschwitz-as-silent-reference of S6.
  • Blanchot and Lévinas's friendship. The deepest French intellectual friendship of the twentieth century. They met as students at Strasbourg in 1925; Blanchot rescued Lévinas's wife and daughter from the Nazis during the Occupation. Derrida's BS-II reading triangulates Blanchot, Lévinas, and Celan as one constellation: ethics, the neutre, the witness who has no witness.
  • Derrida's "À Maurice Blanchot." Derrida delivered a eulogy at Blanchot's cremation (subsequently published in Chaque fois unique, la fin du monde, 2003 / The Work of Mourning, 2001). The seminar's S7 reading is a continuation-and-displacement of that eulogy: the work of mourning Blanchot extends into theoretical re-reading.
  • Blanchot's "impossibility of dying" / "Aminadab" / "Au moment voulu." Blanchot's persistent thematics — the failure of dying-as-such; the not-yet-of-death — directly inform Derrida's BS-II reading of Heidegger's Sterben/Verenden distinction. The animal supposedly cannot die (Heidegger); but Blanchot suggests no one can die in the sense of an experienced, possessed, mastered Sterben. The "impossibility of dying" is shared, not distinguishing. This is one of BS-II's anti-Heideggerian-humanism moves.

Selected Bibliography (Blanchot's works cited in BS-II)

  • Thomas l'obscur (1941) — Thomas the Obscure. Cited in S7 for the burial-alive structure.
  • La part du feu (1949) — The Work of Fire.
  • Au moment voulu (1951) — When the Time Comes. Cited in S7 for the "phantom of the event."
  • Le livre à venir (1959) — The Book to Come.
  • L'attente l'oubli (1962) — Awaiting Oblivion. Cited in S7.
  • L'entretien infini (1969) — The Infinite Conversation.
  • Le pas au-delà (1973) — The Step Not Beyond. Cited in S7.
  • L'écriture du désastre (1980) — The Writing of the Disaster.
  • L'instant de ma mort (1994) — The Instant of My Death. Posthumous-near-death-experience text; pairs with Derrida's Demeure: Maurice Blanchot (1996).
  • Le dernier homme (1957) — The Last Man. Cited in S7.

Connections

  • is mourned by derrida-2002-bete-souverain-ii — S7 (26 Feb 2003) opens with the news of Blanchot's cremation (24 Feb 2003) and develops as sustained reading-and-elegy
  • is the structural predecessor of walten — Blanchot's neutre is the non-violent version of what Heidegger calls Walten
  • enacts survivance — Blanchot's "buried alive" and "impossibility of dying" are paradigm-cases of survivance; the neutre is what survivance operates within
  • engages emmanuel-levinas — lifelong friend; theoretical interlocutor across decades
  • engages paul-celan — the "Aschenglorie" reading and the "no one bears witness for the witness" line
  • is read against Heidegger — Blanchot's neutre and "impossibility of dying" resist Heidegger's Sterben / Verenden opposition
  • is read against Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe — Blanchot reads Kafka and Poe on the buried-alive structure (BS-II S7)
  • engages jacques-derrida — Derrida's eulogy "À Maurice Blanchot" (2003); the long Blanchot-Derrida correspondence; the Demeure: Maurice Blanchot book (1996)
  • engages the seminar's Walten / Austrag register via the neutre (BS-II S7 → S9)
  • contributes to the wiki's mourning / death / cremation register via the timing of his death-and-cremation within the seminar

Sources

  • derrida-2002-bete-souverain-ii — principal entry; S7 throughout (sustained reading after his cremation); S6 (anticipation, since Blanchot was dying); S9 brief reference; the neutre / Walten positioning.
  • Cited via Derrida's own Chaque fois unique, la fin du monde (2003); The Work of Mourning (2001); Demeure: Maurice Blanchot (1996); Parages (2003).