Franz Kafka and Maurice Blanchot
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Writing and the Other: Franz Kafka and Maurice Blanchot A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the Faculty of Humanities 2011 Hossein Moradi School of Arts, Histories and Cultures 1 Content Abstract 3 Declaration and Copyright Statement 4 Acknowledgment 5 Introduction: Franz Kafka and Maurice Blanchot: The Space for the Other in Writing 6 Chapter 1: Literature in Blanchot: Worklessness as Spacing between Word and Its Referent 30 Chapter 2: What is Worklessness in Kafka? 50 Chapter 3: The Act of Writing Part I: The Disappearance of Self 67 Chapter 4: The Act of Writing Part II: Self and the Impossibility of Death 86 Chapter 5: Memory and Récit in Blanchot 111 Chapter 6: The Primal Scene and Récit in Blanchot 132 Chapter 7: Kafka's Fictions and the Impossibility of Narration as Récit 155 Conclusion 176 General Bibliography 191 Final word count, including footnotes: 77095 words 2 Abstract The University of Manchester Hossein Moradi Doctor of Philosophy May 2011 Writing and the Other: Franz Kafka and Maurice Blanchot This thesis attempts to explore what occurs in the act of writing; arguing that the act of writing opens a space for 'the other.' For this argument, I bring Franz Kafka who has remained unthought in terms of the act of writing in the deconstructive thinking close to Maurice Blanchot who writes both theoretical discussion and fiction specifically on the act of writing. Blanchot has written extensively on Kafka; his récits also are influenced by Kafka. In the introduction, I argue through Borges and Benjamin that Kafka and Blanchot create their past and future, so that we understand any text in the past or the future differently if we know them. In other words, works are in dialogue with one another. This creativity is actually being open to 'the other.' Chapter one argues that Blanchot criticizes language for making things absent by representing them. For him, writing should be the act of making space between word and its referent in order that the referent shows itself infinitely. This spacing, for Blanchot, is desoeuvrement or worklessness as an undoing of being, the neutral spacing that let the thing's otherness come infinitely. The second chapter argues that Joseph K. in The Castle is exposed to this spacing or desoeuvrement which makes him and the castle distance from their meaning and find the singular possibilities of their unknown nature as 'the other' infinitely. Blanchot's meaning of literature necessitates dealing with the notion of the author. In this sense, the third chapter argues that when Kafka is metamorphosed into writing he loses his identity. Writing, for Kafka, becomes the space in which he loses his sense of selfhood and sees 'the other' in the self. Chapter four, by reading Blanchot’s The Instant of My Death and Kafka’s Metamorphosis, argues that being exposed to ‘the other’ in writing necessitates the process of dying, not death as one instant that begins and ends. Writing becomes the process that interrupts the border between life and death. The self gets no determination, completion, and totality and at the same time it will not be reducible to disappearance. My fifth and sixth chapters illustrate what Blanchot’s means in writing a récit. Chapter five argues that the récit as a concept questions memory as the place of passed past experiences. In memory, the past, the present and the future become the 'extended present' which means memory is the place in which neither remembering nor forgetting happens. The récit rejects memory as the fixed narrative of the past. Therefore, the récit is the open space with the possibility of inventing 'the other.' Chapter six argues that the recit is the place where opens the Freud's primal scene to the prior scenes endlessly which are not located in the past; they also occur in the future. By this futurity, he leaves the space for 'the other' in the past and the future. The seventh chapter illustrates Kafka's The Trial while thinking of the concept of the récit. The text has no pre-existent story as its origin and problematizes the concept of repetition. By removing the originary state and teleological existence, the text is open to 'the other,' the new possibilities of being written and read endlessly. The conclusion as well as further discussing what ‘the other’ is and how writing lets it come propose that the ethics of writing in Kafka and Blanchot is not limited only to the openness of the self to 'the other;' it also brings out the community which prepares itself for the coming of 'the other.' 3 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any university or other institute of learning. Copyright Statement (i) Copyright in text of this thesis rests with the author. Copies (by any process) either in full, or of extracts, may be made only in accordance with instructions given by the author and lodged in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Details may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. Further copies (by any process) of copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the permission (in writing) of the author. (ii) The ownership of any intellectual propert rights which may be described in this thesis is vested in The University of Manchester, subject to any prior agreement to the contrary, and may not be made available for use by third parties without the written permission of the University, which will prescribe the terms and conditions of any agreement. (iii) Further information on the conditions under which disclosures and exploitation may take place is available from the head of school of the school of Arts, Histories and Cultures. 4 Acknowledgment Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Jeremy Tambling for the continuous support of my Ph.D study and research, for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. His guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my Ph.D study. Besides my supervisor, I would like to thank the rest of my thesis committee: Dr. David Alderson and Anke Bernau for their encouragement, insightful comments, and hard questions. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my wife, Sanaz for supporting me in every respect, my family: my parents Ali and Showkat for giving birth to me at the first place and supporting me spiritually throughout my life, and my teacher and friend, Ahmad Dadkhah for his spiritual inspiration and intellectual motivation to me. 5 Introduction Franz Kafka and Maurice Blanchot: The Space for the Other in Writing For deconstructive thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Emmanuel Levinas, and Maurice Blanchot, what is called deconstruction can be the act of questioning and looking at limits and borders. According to Spivak, who has given a general explanation of deconstruction, the violation of borders which characterizes the main feature of deconstruction brings the self into a relationship with what can be named radical alterity or otherness. The advent of the 'other' occurs outside the human subject in an ontological horizon which deals with origin and identity.1 In this sense, deconstruction brings into question any structure which is presupposed to be closed and subject to limitations and conditions. This question obviously includes origin and identity in the ontological horizon. In deconstructive thinking, literature is where boundaries in ontology are violated. Literature, as Jacques Derrida writes, stands on the edge of everything, almost beyond everything, including itself.2 Literature offers a place for the 'other' and prepares self for the 'other' to come. Preparing for the 'other,' in deconstruction, is constructive and affirmative as it may seem to dismantle and decompose the integration of self. This thesis specifically deals with the question 'how does writing as the generic term which includes literature make a space to let the 'other' come?' in Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and the French writer and deconstructive theorist, Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003). Franz Kafka is one of the most influential novelists and short story writers of the early 20th century. Kafka seems to be accessible to almost any methodology one might care to apply. In fact, he appears to be the ideal subject for literary criticism. The debate on the validity of any interpretation of his works is endless. This is why we witness how critics have interpreted Kafka's works in the context of a variety of literary and non-literary schools, such as modernism, surrealism, magic realism, and symbolic reading and in non-literary schools, in areas such as philosophy, theology, psychology, sociology, and linguistics.3 Kafka has 1 For the definition of deconstruction, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 'The Setting to Work of Deconstruction' in A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999); Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2003); Nicholas Royle, Jacques Derrida (London: Routledge, 2003); and Radolph Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986). 2 Jacques Derrida, Acts of Literature, ed. by Derek Atrridge (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 47. 3 For comprehensive reference book of both primary and secondary texts pertaining to Kafka, see Maria Luise Caputo-Mayr and Juliusn M. Herz, Franz Kafka: An International Bibliography of Primary and Secondary 6 though remained untouched by deconstructive reading in terms of the act of writing which leaves the space for the 'other.' Besides other major French deconstructive figures such as Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Emmanuel Levinas, Blanchot as the important figure in deconstructive thinking perhaps more than anyone else has looked at literature and the nature of writing and specifically occupies himself with the question I pose in this thesis.