Description
Book SynopsisBlanchot and his writings on three major poets, Mallarmé, Hölderlin, and Char, provide a decisive new point of departure for English language criticism of his philosophical writings on narrative in this study by leading Blanchot scholar, Kevin Hart.
Connecting his work to later leading figures of 20th-century French philosophy, including Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, and Jacques Derrida, Hart highlights the importance of Jewish philosophy and political thought to his overall conception of literature. Chapters on community and negation reveal Blanchot's emphasis on the relationship between narrative and politics over the more commonly connected narrative and aesthetics. By fully discussing Blanchot's elusive concept of the Outside for the first time, this book progresses scholarly understandings of his entire oeuvre further. This central concept engages Franz Rosenzweig's work on Abrahamic faiths, enabling a reckoning on the role of suffering and literature in the wake of the
Trade Review
In this authoritative and wide-ranging new book, the result of nearly two decades of detailed engagement with the literary, philosophical, and political writings of Maurice Blanchot, Kevin Hart renews with impressive lucidity and toughness of mind contemporary understanding of one of the twentieth-century’s most original and distinctive voices. * Leslie Hill, Emeritus Professor in French Studies, University of Warwick, UK *
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Blanchot Encore PART I. On Poetry 1. Blanchot’s Mallarmé 2. Blanchot’s Hölderlin 3. Blanchot’s Char PART II. On Friendship 4. Blanchot’s Weil 5. The Aggrieved Community 6. Friendship of the No PART III. On Narrative 7. The Neutral Reduction: Thomas l’Obscur 8. Lès-Poésie: Levinas Reads La Folie du jour 9. Ethics of the Image PART IV. On Being Jewish 10. The Third Relation 11. From the Star to the Disaster 12. “The Absolute Event of History”: The Shoah Afterword Notes Index Bibliography
