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Writing Otherwise Than Seeing. Writing and Exteriority in Maurice Blanchot

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Writing Otherwise Than Seeing. Writing and Exteriority in Maurice Blanchot View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto OUTI ALANKO-KAHILUOTO WRITING OTHERWISE THAN SEEING Writing and Exteriority in Maurice Blanchot Academic dissertation to be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki in auditorium XII, on the 25th of May, 2007, at 12 o’clock. OUTI ALANKO-KAHILUOTO WRITING OTHERWISE THAN SEEING Writing and Exteriority in Maurice Blanchot © 2007, Outi Alanko-Kahiluoto ISBN 978-952-92-2128-8 (nid.) ISBN 978-952-10-3968-3 (PDF) http://ethesis.helsinki.fi Helsinki University Printing House Helsinki 2007 Abstract Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), the French writer and novelist, is one of the most important figures in post-war French literature and philosophy. The main intention of this study is to figure out his position and originality in the field of phenomenology. Since this thesis concentrates on the notion of vision in Blanchot’s work, its primary context is the post-war discussion of the relation between seeing and thinking in France, and particularly the discussion of the conditions of non-violent vision and language. The focus will be on the philosophical conversation between Blanchot and his contemporary philosophers. The central premise is the following: Blanchot relates the criticism of vision to the criticism of the representative model of language. In this thesis, Blanchot’s definition of literary language as “the refusal to reveal anything” is read as a reference pointing in two directions. First, to Hegel’s idea of naming as negativity which reveals Being incrementally to man, and second, to Heidegger’s idea of poetry as the simultaneity of revealing and withdrawal; the aim is to prove that eventually Blanchot opposes both Hegel’s idea of naming as a gradual revelation of the totality of being and Heidegger’s conception of poetry as a way of revealing the truth of Being. My other central hypothesis is that for Blanchot, the criticism of the privilege of vision is always related to the problematic of the exteriority. The principal intention is to trace how Blanchot’s idea of language as infinity and exteriority challenges both the Hegelian idea of naming as conceptualizing things and Heidegger’s concept of language as a way to truth (as aletheia). The intention is to show how Blanchot, with his concepts of fascination, resemblance and image, both affirms and challenges the central points of Heidegger’s thinking on language. Blanchot’s originality in, and contribution to, the discussion about the violence of vision and language is found in his answer to the question of how to approach the other by avoiding the “worst violence”. I claim that by criticizing the idea of language as naming both in Hegel and Heidegger, Blanchot generates an account of language which, since it neither negates nor creates Being, is beyond the metaphysical opposition between Being and non-Being. Acknowledgements I began to read Blanchot in Athens in 1996 when I worked there as a member of the Finnish research group ”Mythical Bodies and European Thought”, led by Ph.D. Kirsti Simonsuuri. Kirsti encouraged me to read the history of the Orphic myth through Blanchot's version of Orpheus and Eurydice. I want to express my warmest thanks to Kirsti for her hospitality in Athens, her supervision as the leader of the research group, and her friendship during all these years. After Athens, my work with Blanchot proceeded for a long time only slowly and painfully. During the years 1998-2001 I was working as the assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki, and my children Jalmari and Kaarina were born in 1996 and in 1999. I had the opportunity to work on Blanchot again when Ph.D. Päivi Mehtonen invited me to participate in her research group in 2001. The first drafts of my dissertation were written during my assignment as a researcher in Päivi's project “Illuminating Darkness. Rhetoric, Poetics, and European Writing” in 2001. After this project funding ended I had an opportunity to continue and finish my work in the research project "Encounters in Art and Philosophy" funded by the the Academy of Finland and led by PhD Kuisma Korhonen. I wish to express my heartful thanks to Kirsti Simonsuuri, Päivi Mehtonen and Kuisma Korhonen for their valuable comments and guidance, and, above all, for having faith in my project during the writing process. I am greatful to Professors Hannu Riikonen and Heta Pyrhönen in the Department of Comparative Literature for their support and patience during all these years. I thank them also for commenting on the final draft of my dissertation. Finally, I want to thank my supervisor, PhD Outi Pasanen for her valuable advice and encouragement especially in the early phases of this work. I am especially thankful to Jari Kauppinen and Markku Lehtinen for their help and feedback at all stages of my work and particularly in its final stages. I would also like to express my gratitude to my collegues, above all Esa Kirkkopelto, Sami Santanen, Hannu Sivenius, Martta Heikkilä and Jussi Omaheimo for sharing their thoughts concerning my work. Most of all, I would like to extend my thanks to my friends Susanna Lindberg, Merja Hintsa, Tiina Käkelä-Puumala, Sanna Turoma and Soili Takkala for their friendship, encouragement and just for their existence. I am deeply greatful to John Gage for his careful revising of my English. I greatfully acknowledge Suomen Kulttuurirahasto Foudation and the Acadamy of Finland for financial support. I warmly thank my mother Helena for her help and support at at all stages of my work and life. I want to express my warmest thanks to my family, to Atro, Jalmari and Kaarina, for their patience during these years in which I have been "finishing my dissertation". TABLE OF CONTENTS I Introduction 10 Violence of Light and Vision 19 How to (Not) Think of the Other? 28 Exteriority and Language 33 II How to Avoid Doing Things with Words? 41 The Question of Literature 41 Debate over “Nothingness” and Blanchot’s Thomas l’Obscur 46 Vision in Blanchot 52 How to Read Thomas the Obscure 58 Experience of Literature 65 III Exteriority of Language 74 Language as a Gaze that Kills 74 I say, “My future disappearance” 83 The Two Sides of Language 91 Double Meaning 96 The Exteriority of Language 102 The Infinity of Meaning 109 The Force of Language 119 IV From Perception to Fascination, from Representation to Image: Literary Experience in Blanchot 127 The Gaze of the Text 130 From Umsicht to Fascination 138 Il y a – “it watches” 147 The Two Versions of the Imaginary 157 Behind this Mask There Is Nothing 163 V Writing Otherwise than Seeing 170 Heidegger’s Ontological Analysis of Language 175 Literature Against Revelation 184 From Being to Writing 194 Fragmentary Writing 202 The Narrative Voice – Writing Otherwise Than Seeing 208 Language as the Other 215 Bibliography 225 I Introduction Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), the French writer and novelist, is one of the most important figures in post-war French literature and philosophy. A whole generation of contemporary writers and theorists, among them Emmanuel Levinas (1906-95), Georges Bataille (1897- 1962), Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Paul de Man (1919-1983) acknowledge their debt to Blanchot’s thinking.1 From the 1940s onwards, Blanchot’s work has participated in and influenced the discussion of all philosophical movements in the field of French philosophy: phenomenology in the 1940s, structuralism in the 1950s and 1960s, and post-structuralism in the 1960s, including the discussion of the relation between philosophy, ethics, and politics which has been the prevalent theme in Blanchot’s writings throughout his career, and to which French discussion turned in the 1980s. Blanchot’s influence on the movements of post-structuralism and deconstruction has been remarkable. Citing Ullrich Haase and William Large, “What has come to be known as post-structuralism, which has had such a decisive impact on Anglo-American critical theory, is completely unthinkable without [Blanchot]”.2 Haase and Large even claim that “it is difficult to find an idea in Derrida’s work that is not present in the writings of Blanchot”.3 Blanchot scholar Gerald L. Bruns in his turn writes that “the notions of language that turn up in the writings of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze are directly traceable to Blanchot”.4 1 See for example L’Œil du bœuf 14/15 (May 1998), which is dedicated to Blanchot. 2 Haase & Large 2001, 1. 3 Haase & Large 2001, 131. 4 Bruns 1997, 286. For example, Paul de Man’s notions of “blindness” and “error” and Roland Barthes’s idea of the death of the author refer to Blanchot’s ideas on language. Derrida’s ideas of the “undecidability” of language and thought have also been influenced by Blanchot’s thinking. The relation between Blanchot and Derrida is to be understood as a dialogue. Derrida pays homage to Blanchot, for example, in Parages (1986, 55). Blanchot, in his turn, confesses Derrida’s influence already in The Infinite Conversation (L'Entretien Infini, 1969), writing that “these pages are written at the margin of books by Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Eugen Fink, and Jean Granier […] and of several of Jacques Derrida’s essays, collected in L’écriture 10 As a writer whose texts blur all the existing genre distinctions and definitions, Blanchot’s position in the field of literature, criticism and philosophy is a complex matter to define.
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