Maurice Blanchot (; ; 22 September 1907 – 20 February 2003) was a French writer, philosopher and

literary theorist Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mora ...

. His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside

poetic Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in a ...

theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on

post-structuralist Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critiques ...

philosophers such as

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...

and

Jean-Luc Nancy Jean-Luc Nancy ( , ; 26 July 1940 – 23 August 2021) was a French philosopher. Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was ''Le titre de la lettre'' (''The Title of the Letter'', 1992), a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Laca ...

Biography

Pre-1945

Blanchot was born in the village of Quain (

Saône-et-Loire Saône-et-Loire (; Arpitan: ''Sona-et-Lêre'') is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in France. It is named after the rivers Saône and Loire, between which it lies, in the country's central-eastern part. Saône-et-Loire is Bo ...

) on 22 September 1907. Blanchot studied philosophy at the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. The French university traces its history to the ea ...

, where he became a close friend of the Lithuanian-born French Jewish phenomenologist

Emmanuel Levinas Emmanuel Levinas (; ; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to me ...

. He then embarked on a career as a political journalist in Paris. From 1932 to 1940 he was editor of the mainstream conservative daily the ''Journal des débats''. In 1930 he earned his DES ('), roughly equivalent to an

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

at the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

, with a thesis titled "La Conception du Dogmatisme chez les Sceptiques anciens d'après Sextus Empiricus" ("The Conception of Dogmatism in the Ancient Sceptics According to Sextus Empiricus").Alan D. Schrift (2006), ''Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers'', Blackwell Publishing, p. 101. Early in the 1930s he contributed to a series of radical nationalist magazines while also serving as editor of the fiercely anti-German daily ''Le rempart'' in 1933 and as editor of Paul Lévy's anti-Nazi polemical weekly ''Aux écoutes''. In 1936 and 1937 he also contributed to the far right monthly ''Combat'' and to the nationalist-syndicalist daily ''L'Insurgé'', which eventually ceased publication – largely as a result of Blanchot's intervention – because of the anti-semitism of some of its contributors. There is no dispute that Blanchot was nevertheless the author of a series of violently polemical articles attacking the government of the day and its confidence in the politics of the League of Nations, and warned persistently against the threat to peace in Europe posed by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. In December 1940, he met

Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...

, who had written strong anti-fascist articles in the thirties, and who would remain a close friend until his death in 1962. Blanchot worked in Paris during the Nazi occupation. In order to support his family he continued to work as a book reviewer for the ''Journal des débats'' from 1941 to 1944, writing for instance about such figures as Sartre and Camus, Bataille and Michaux, Mallarmé and Duras for a putatively Pétainist

Vichy Vichy (, ; ; oc, Vichèi, link=no, ) is a city in the Allier Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of central France, in the historic province of Bourbonnais. It is a Spa town, spa and resort town and in World ...

readership. In these reviews he laid the foundations for later French critical thinking by examining the ambiguous rhetorical nature of language and the irreducibility of the written word to notions of truth or falsity. He refused the editorship of the collaborationist ''

Nouvelle Revue Française ''La Nouvelle Revue Française'' (; "The New French Review") is a literary magazine based in France. In France, it is often referred to as the ''NRF''. History and profile The magazine was founded in 1909 by a group of intellectuals including An ...

'' for which, as part of an elaborate ploy, he had been suggested by

Jean Paulhan Jean Paulhan (2 December 1884 – 9 October 1968) was a French writer, literary critic and publisher, director of the literary magazine ''Nouvelle Revue Française'' (NRF) from 1925 to 1940 and from 1946 to 1968. He was a member (Seat 6, 1963–68 ...

. He was active in the Resistance and remained a bitter opponent of the fascist, anti-semitic novelist and journalist

Robert Brasillach Robert Brasillach (; 31 March 1909 – 6 February 1945) was a French author and journalist. Brasillach was the editor of ''Je suis partout'', a nationalist newspaper which advocated fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot. After the liberat ...

, who was the principal leader of the pro-Nazi collaborationist movement. In June 1944, Blanchot was almost executed by a Nazi firing squad (as recounted in his text ''The Instant of My Death'').

Post-1945

After the war, Blanchot began working only as a novelist and literary critic. In 1947, Blanchot left Paris for the secluded village of

Èze Èze (; oc, Esa; it, Eza) is a seaside commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in Southeastern France. It is located on the French Riviera, 8.5 km (5.2 mi) to the northeast of Nice and 4.5 km (2.7 mi ...

in the south of France, where he spent the next decade of his life. Like

Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...

and other French intellectuals of the era, Blanchot avoided the academy as a means of livelihood, instead relying on his pen. Importantly, from 1953 to 1968, he published regularly in ''Nouvelle Revue Française''. At the same time, he began a lifestyle of relative isolation, often not seeing close friends (like

Levinas Levinas is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), French philosopher * Michaël Lévinas (born 1949), French composer, son of Emmanuel * Danielle Cohen-Levinas Danielle Cohen-Levinas (born 21 April ...

) for years, while continuing to write lengthy letters to them. Part of the reason for his self-imposed isolation (and only part of it – his isolation was closely connected to his writing and is often featured among his characters) was the fact that, for most of his life, Blanchot suffered from poor health. Blanchot's political activities after the war shifted to the left. He is widely credited with being one of the main authors of the important "

Manifesto of the 121 The Manifesto of the 121 (french: Manifeste des 121, full title: ''Déclaration sur le droit à l’insoumission dans la guerre d’Algérie'' or ''Declaration on the right of insubordination in the Algerian War'') was an open letter signed by 121 i ...

", named after the number of its signatories, who included

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...

Robert Antelme Robert Antelme (5 January 1917, Sartène, Corse-du-Sud – 26 October 1990) was a French writer. During the Second World War he was involved in the French Resistance and deported. In 1939 he married Marguerite Duras. Their child died at birth in 1 ...

Alain Robbe-Grillet Alain Robbe-Grillet (; 18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008) was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the '' Nouveau Roman'' (new novel) trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and C ...

Marguerite Duras Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film ''Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) ea ...

, René Char,

Henri Lefebvre Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of so ...

Alain Resnais Alain Resnais (; 3 June 19221 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included ...

Simone Signoret Simone Signoret (; born Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker; 25 March 1921 – 30 September 1985) was a French actress. She received various accolades, including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, a César Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a ...

and others, which supported the rights of conscripts to refuse to serve in the colonial war in Algeria. The manifesto was crucial to the intellectual response to the war. In May 1968, Blanchot once again emerged from personal obscurity, in support of the student protests. It was his sole public appearance after the war. Yet for fifty years he remained a consistent champion of modern literature and its tradition in French letters. During the later years of his life, he repeatedly wrote against the intellectual attraction to fascism, and notably against

Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...

's post-war silence over

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

. Blanchot wrote more than thirty works of fiction, literary criticism, and philosophy. Up to the 1970s, he worked continually in his writing to break the barriers between what are generally perceived as different "genres" or "tendencies", and much of his later work moves freely between narration and philosophical investigation. In 1983, Blanchot published ''La Communauté inavouable'' (''The Unavowable Community''). This work inspired ''The Inoperative Community'' (1986),

's attempt to approach community in a non-religious, non-utilitarian and un-political exegesis. He died on 20 February 2003 in

Le Mesnil-Saint-Denis Le Mesnil-Saint-Denis () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. Demographics Schools The commune has two public preschools, Maternelle de Champmesnil and Maternelle du Bois du Fay, as w ...

, Yvelines, France.

Work

Blanchot's work explores a philosophy of death, not in

humanistic Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humani ...

terms, but through concerns of

paradox A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...

, impossibility, nonsense and the

noumenal In philosophy, a noumenon (, ; ; noumena) is a posited object or an event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception. The term ''noumenon'' is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term ''phenomenon'', which ...

that stem from the conceptual impossibility of death. He constantly engaged with the "question of literature", a simultaneous enactment and interrogation of the idiosyncratic act of writing. For Blanchot, "literature begins at the moment when literature becomes a question". Blanchot drew on the poetics of

Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...

and

Paul Celan Paul Celan (; ; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a Romanian-born German-language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz), in the then Kingdom of Romania (now Chernivtsi, U ...

, as well as the concept of negation in the

Hegelian dialectic Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to ...

, for his theory of

literary language A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language. Literary language sometimes is noticeably different from the spoken langu ...

as something that is always anti-realist and so distinct from everyday experience that

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *Classical Realism *Literary realism, a move ...

does not simply stand for literature about reality, but for literature concerning paradoxes made by the qualities of the act of writing. Blanchot's literary theory parallels Hegel's philosophy, establishing that actual reality always succeeds conceptual reality. For instance, "I say flower," Mallarmé wrote in "Poetry in Crisis", "and outside the oblivion to which my voice relegates any shape, ..there arises ..the one absent from every bouquet." What the everyday use of language steps over in order to casually make use of an idea of something, and what literature on the other hand remains fascinated by, is the absence of the tangibility of the thing in literary language; in Hegelian terms, the act of writing is a negation of the negation, both of the thing when idealized and the idea when written. To Blanchot, it is here that literature, at its most creative, becomes

self-referential Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philoso ...

as a rebellion against the boundary between a concept of something and what it is in actuality. Blanchot's best-known fictional works are ''Thomas l'Obscur'' (''Thomas the Obscure''), an unsettling ''

récit A ''récit'' is a subgenre of the French novel, in which the narrative calls attention to itself. Literary critic Roger Shattuck explains, "During a ''récit'', we are conscious of being at one remove from the action; the very act of narration int ...

'' (which "is not the narration of an event, but that event itself, the approach to that event, the place where that event is made to happen ...") about the experience of reading and loss, ''Death Sentence'', ''Aminadab'', and ''The Most High''. His central theoretical works are "Literature and the Right to Death" (in ''The Work of Fire'' and ''The Gaze of Orpheus''), ''The Space of Literature'', ''The Infinite Conversation'', and ''The Writing of the Disaster''.

Themes

Blanchot engages with

on the question of how literature and death are both experienced as an anonymous passivity, an experience that Blanchot variously refers to as "the Neutral" (''le neutre''). Unlike Heidegger, Blanchot instead rejects the possibility of an authentic relation to death, ''because'' he rejects the conceptual possibility of death. In a manner similar to

, who Blanchot later became influenced by with regards to the question of responsibility to

the Other In phenomenology, the terms the Other and the Constitutive Other identify the other human being, in their differences from the Self, as being a cumulative, constituting factor in the self-image of a person; as acknowledgement of being real; h ...

, he reverses Heidegger's position on death as the "possibility of the absolute impossibility" of

Dasein ''Dasein'' () (sometimes spelled as Da-sein) is the German word for 'existence'. It is a fundamental concept in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger uses the expression ''Dasein'' to refer to the experience of being that is p ...

, instead viewing death as the "impossibility of every possibility".Maurice Blanchot, ''The Writing of the Disaster'' (trans. Ann Smock), University of Nebraska, 1995

Bibliography

Fiction and narrations (''
récit A ''récit'' is a subgenre of the French novel, in which the narrative calls attention to itself. Literary critic Roger Shattuck explains, "During a ''récit'', we are conscious of being at one remove from the action; the very act of narration int ...
s'')

*''Thomas l'Obscur'', 1941 (''Thomas the Obscure'') * ''Aminadab'', 1942 *'' L'Arrêt de mort'', 1948 (''Death Sentence'') *''Le Très-Haut'', 1949 (''The Most High'') *"Le Dernier homme", 1957 ("The Last Man") *''La Folie du jour'', 1973 (''The Madness of the Day'') *''L'Instant de ma mort'', 1994 (''The Instant of My Death'')

Philosophical or theoretical works

*''Faux Pas'', 1943 *''La Part du feu'', 1949 (''The Work of Fire'') *''Lautréamont et Sade'', 1949 (''Lautréamont and Sade'') *''L'Espace littéraire'', 1955 (''The Space of Literature'') *''Le Livre à venir'', 1959 (''The Book to Come'') *''L'Entretien infini'', 1969 (''The Infinite Conversation'') *''L'Amitié'', 1971 (''Friendship'') *''Le Pas au-delà'', 1973 (''The Step Not Beyond'') *''L'Ecriture du désastre'', 1980 (''The Writing of the Disaster'') *''La Communauté inavouable'', 1983 (''The Unavowable Community'') *''Une voix venue d'ailleurs'', 2002 (''A Voice from Elsewhere'') Many of Blanchot's principal translators into English have since established reputations as prose stylists and poets in their own right; some of the more well-known of them include

Lydia Davis Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short (one or two pages long) short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of ...

Paul Auster Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include ''The New York Trilogy'' (1987), ''Moon Palace'' (1989), ''The Music of Chance'' (1990), ''The Book of Illusions'' (2002), ''The Broo ...

and

Pierre Joris Pierre Joris (born July 14, 1946) is a Luxembourg-American poet, essayist, translator, and anthologist. He has moved between Europe, North Africa & the US for 55 years, publishing over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — mo ...

Biography

Pre-1945

Post-1945

Work

Themes

Bibliography

Fiction and narrations (''
récit A ''récit'' is a subgenre of the French novel, in which the narrative calls attention to itself. Literary critic Roger Shattuck explains, "During a ''récit'', we are conscious of being at one remove from the action; the very act of narration int ...
s'')

Philosophical or theoretical works

Notes

References

Further reading

Biography

Pre-1945

Post-1945

Work

Themes

Bibliography

Fiction and narrations (''récit A ''récit'' is a subgenre of the French novel, in which the narrative calls attention to itself. Literary critic Roger Shattuck explains, "During a ''récit'', we are conscious of being at one remove from the action; the very act of narration int ...s'')

Philosophical or theoretical works

Notes

References

Further reading

Fiction and narrations (''
récit A ''récit'' is a subgenre of the French novel, in which the narrative calls attention to itself. Literary critic Roger Shattuck explains, "During a ''récit'', we are conscious of being at one remove from the action; the very act of narration int ...
s'')