Maurice Blanchot: Art and Technology

A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/101267/ Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications Maurice Blanchot: Art and Technology Holly Langstaff A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French Studies University of Warwick, School of Modern Languages and Cultures September 2017 Contents Introduction 1 1. Blanchot and Mallarmé: Le double état de la parole 21 ‘Le double état de la parole’ 23 Literary Autonomy 35 Literary Foundations 44 Literature as Deception 51 ‘Mais quand y a-t-il la littérature?’ 59 2. An Inhuman Interruption 70 The History of Being 72 ‘Wozu Dichter?’ 85 Death: The Impossibility of Possibility 92 A Turning 103 Animals and Automation 110 3. Technology and the Neuter 127 La Technique 131 Writing as techne and Modern Technology 145 The Neuter: Kafka and Le Dernier Homme 166 4. Inorganic Writing 183 Fragmentary Writing and Technology 184 The Cancerous Machine 207 Conclusion 214 Bibliography 223 Declaration I confirm that the material in this thesis represents my own work and has not been submitted for a degree at another university. Abstract Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), writer of fiction, literary critic, political journalist and thinker, is one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century literature and thought. The relationship between art and technology is a largely unexplored aspect of Blanchot’s writing; this thesis examines his engagement with the question of techne in criticism and fiction over a fifty-year period and demonstrates that he is far from subscribing to the technophobia of probably the most influential thinker of technology, Martin Heidegger. It is argued that writing for Blanchot is a mode of techne which destabilises the opposition between nature and culture, or nature and technology, or nature and history, and provides a means of thinking other than the anthropos. The chronological approach of this thesis stresses how a thinking of writing as techne radicalises over time and indicates the enduring influence of Blanchot. The first chapter considers the treatment of the division, often taken for granted by critics, between literary and everyday language; focussing on Blanchot’s reading of Mallarmé in essays dating from 1940 to 1952, this chapter reveals a shift in his thinking of literature from autonomy to radical non-essentiality. The second chapter examines Blanchot’s critical engagement with Heidegger in essays written in 1953 and shows how we might reconcile Blanchot’s work with ecological thought. A third chapter focuses on the discussion of modern technologies in essays from the 1950s and 1960s and the coincidental emergence of the non-concept of the neuter in literature and criticism; it listens to various apocalyptic tones in work from this period to reveal a continuity between the experience of the technological and of the imaginary. The final chapter explores how ‘technique’ is everywhere implied once the term disappears from Blanchot’s idiom; it argues that fragmentary writing is that techne which outplays the human. Introduction ‘En quelque sorte, j’ai toujours eu une certaine passion politique. La chose publique me provoque souvent.’1 These words, written in a letter to Roger Laporte in 1984, show that Blanchot, contrary to rumour or reputation, was no isolated hermit but someone deeply immersed in the events and debates of his time. A newspaper article from 1996 describing Blanchot’s protest when Bruno Roy, director of Fata Morgana, refused to withdraw a text by founder of the New Right Alain de Benoist from the publishing house’s catalogue perpetuates the view of Blanchot as, ‘depuis de nombreuses années à l’écart de la vie publique, sortant difficilement de sa réserve; ses rares interventions sont donc très remarquées.’2 But his regular pre-war journalism from 1932 to 1940, his resistance to Nazi Occupation and the Vichy regime during the Second World War, which culminated in a near-death experience before a firing squad in June 1944 (recounted fifty years later in L’Instant de ma mort), his anti-Gaullism, his opposition to the Algerian war, his involvement in the events of May 1968 and his sustained interest in international affairs, particularly concerning Russia,3 attest to a political 1 Maurice Blanchot, letter to Roger Laporte [22 December 1984], in Maurice Blanchot: passion politique, lettre- récit de 1984 suivie d’une lettre de Dionys Mascolo, by Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris: Galilée, 2011), p. 62. This letter was initially intended to be published in the abortive Cahiers de l’Herne that Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe were due to edit in 1984/5. 2 Nicholas Weill, ‘Maurice Blanchot et le débat sur la “nouvelle droite”’, Le Monde, 15 November 1996, p. 28. See also Laurent Perez, ‘Maurice Blanchot: la rhétorique du déni’ [review of L’Autre Blanchot, by Michel Surya], Artpress, 422 (May 2015), 76. Perez writes of Blanchot: ‘Son ultime “retrait” — dont il n’est pas interdit de supposer qu’il répond autant aux premières découvertes sur son passé qu’à l’échec de mai 68 —, s’il prend bien vite la forme d’une conversion inconditionnelle à un “judaïsme imaginaire”, s’effectue en effet d’abord sur le mode de l’amertume et de la dépression.’ 3 This is noted by the editor of the volume of correspondence between Blanchot and Vadim Kozovoï; see Denis Aucouturier, ‘Introduction’, in Lettres à Vadim Kozovoï, by Maurice Blanchot, ed. by Denis Aucouturier (Houilles: Manucius, 2009), p. 9. 1 engagement that runs counter to the myth of the solitary writer.4 Nevertheless, ‘[l]a chose publique’ better encompasses the broader scope of Blanchot’s interest than ‘politics’ in the limited sense of the word. For much of the 1930s and 1940s Blanchot was employed as journalist and book reviewer: writing for periodicals about anything topical he acquired an ingrained habit of responding immediately to everyday events and new publications. This habit would persist throughout his career and continued to shape essays published in later volumes such as L’Entretien infini [1969] and L’Amitié [1971]. ‘Le Tout Dernier Mot’, an essay on Kafka’s correspondence with Felice Bauer, was simultaneously the very last word on Kafka’s life, the very last word by Blanchot on Kafka, and the very last piece Blanchot published in the Nouvelle Revue française in 1968; and all this by virtue of the fact that the volume of correspondence had just appeared in German and Blanchot was responding directly to it, while also reflecting on longer-lasting issues of his own.5 Similarly, almost all references in La Communauté inavouable [1983] are to texts that had only just appeared by Derrida, Duras, Enriquez, Kofman, Nancy and the Rilke-Pasternak-Tsvetayeva letters.6 Finally, two essays by Blanchot concerned with nuclear weapons, ‘Entretien sur un changement d’époque’ [April 1960] and ‘L’Apocalypse déçoit’ [March 1964], appeared a month or so after the first nuclear weapons test by the French on 13 February 1960 in Reggane, a district in Algeria, and after these weapons became available for use in January 1964.7 This demonstrates how essential it is to view everything that 4 Blanchot makes this point himself in Pour l’amitié (Paris: Fourbis, 1996) (first publ. in À la recherche d’un communisme de pensée, by Dionys Mascolo (Paris: Fourbis, 1993), pp. 5-16). For biographical details see Christophe Bident, Maurice Blanchot: partenaire invisible (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1998). 5 Maurice Blanchot, ‘Le Tout Dernier Mot’, La Nouvelle Revue française, 185 (May 1968), 780-808. This was later published in Maurice Blanchot, L’Amitié (Paris: Gallimard 1971), pp. 300-25; and in Maurice Blanchot, De Kafka à Kafka, Idées, 453 (Paris: Gallimard, 1981), pp. 219-48. 6 Maurice Blanchot, La Communauté inavouable (Paris: Minuit, 1983). Texts cited include: Jacques Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie (February 1983); Jean-Luc Nancy, ‘La Communauté désœuvrée’ (published in Aléa, February 1983); Marguerite Duras, La Maladie de la mort (in bookshops at the beginning of January 1983); Eugène Enriquez, De la horde à l’État: essai de psychanalyse du lien social (February 1983); the French translation of the three-handed volume of correspondence between Rilke, Pasternak and Tsvetaeva (February 1983); and Sarah Kofman, Comment s’en sortir (January 1983). 7 See, for instance, ‘Le Général de Gaulle: hourra pour la France’, Le Monde, 15 February 1960; ‘Un décret confie officiellement au président de la République la responsabilité d'engager la force de frappe’, Le Monde, 21 January 1964. 2 Blanchot writes within a very specific intellectual and historical context, a methodology which informs the chronological and contextual approach of this thesis. One of the most important thinkers Blanchot engages with is Martin Heidegger, whose influence on French philosophy cannot be underestimated: his ideas have left their mark on Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Levinas, Lyotard and Stiegler, among others. Blanchot is certainly a name to include on this list. Introduced to Heidegger’s work in 1927 or 1928 by his close friend Emmanuel Levinas, he describes the experience of reading Sein und Zeit for the first time as ‘un véritable choc intellectuel’.8 Accessing Heidegger’s work as it was published in German meant that Blanchot could respond immediately to texts whose translation into French was often delayed: ‘Die Frage nach der Technik’ [1953] appeared in Essais et conférences [1958] five years after its initial publication; Holzwege [1950], the volume containing ‘Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes’ and ‘Wozu Dichter?’, did not appear in French until 1962; and Sein und Zeit [1927] was not translated in its entirety until 1986.9 A number of translations of sections of Heidegger’s texts have been found in Blanchot’s personal archive.

Load more