Description
Book SynopsisThe first book to provide a detailed account of fragmentary writing in the work of the French novelist, critic, and thinker Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003).
Trade Review"Maurice Blanchot and Fragmentary Writing is a remarkable study of the most extraordinary and enduring literary figure in twentieth-century France. An acknowledged authority on Blanchot and his peers, Leslie Hill guides the reader through some of the most difficult and exciting writing produced after the Second World War: his remarks on the imbrications of literature and philosophy are never less than illuminating. Any new book by Leslie Hill is an event in French Studies, and this one is no exception." -- Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, USA
"What are fragments? Chips, flecks, scraps, orts, bits, grinds, clasts, shards, sherds, slivers, splinters, crumbs... a potentially infinite list, which is the point made by Leslie Hill's subtle and forceful meditation on Blanchot's practice of the literary fragment. Such pulverulence contaminates everything, every whole comes undone until we face a more open future since it, too, is fragmentary." -Jean-Michel Rabaté, Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania
Summarized. * Notre Dame Philosophical Review *
In his recent book,
Maurice Blanchot and Fragmentary Writing, Hill argues convincingly that the fragmentary indicates an ethico-political exigency in Blanchot’s writing that is all too often overlooked by his critics and neglected by historians of modern literature. Hill frames his readings of Blanchot around the view that the fragment does not simply designate a missing piece of the whole, which must be recovered or restored. On the contrary, it ruins the logic of completion that is elsewhere held to unify the work of literature. -- Michael Krimper * Make Mag *
Table of ContentsChapter One: A Turning1. A spectre
2. Writing the future
3. From fragment to fragmentary
4. The limits of nihilism
5. Radical suspension
Chapter Two: The Demand of the Fragmentary1. A gift
2. A double voice
3. Presence without present
Chapter Three: An Interruption1. From threshold to threshold
2. A step further
3. The law of return
4. Voice without voice
5. A politics of the fragmentary
6. Burying the dead
Chapter Four: Writing — Disaster1. What is called disaster?
2. Another epoch
3. What happened
4. The youngest day
Chapter Five: A Change of Epoch Bibliography
Index
