‘Pardon for not meaning’: Remarks on Derrida, Blanchot and Kafka

Derrida Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Sheaffer-Jones
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Maurice Blanchot

Jacques Derrida returns relentlessly to the question of literature which is already a prominent concern in early texts such as Writing and Difference. The focus of this article is the conception of literature in ‘Literature in Secret: An Impossible Filiation’, in which Derrida discusses filiation with reference to Abraham and Isaac, the fundamental necessity of secrecy and the notion of the pardon. Above all, it is Kafka's Letter to His Father which perhaps provides a paradigm for defining literature. In this specular address, the promise of a heritage is in the balance. Writing incessantly on Kafka, Maurice Blanchot also reflects on literature. The notion of literature put forward by Derrida in ‘Literature in Secret: An Impossible Filiation’ is considered in this article, as well as reflections by Blanchot, to show what might be at stake in Kafka's Letter to His Father.

scholarly journals The Stranger as Friend: The Poetics of Friendship in Homer, Dante, and Boccaccio

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franco Masciandaro
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Natural Extension ◽  
Divine Comedy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
The Divine Comedy ◽  
The One ◽  
The Stranger

The principal aim of this study is to participate in the current renewed discourse on the meaning of friendship, initiated in 1994 by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida with his Politics of Friendship, by combining the philosophical method of inquiry with the hermeneutical approach to poetic representations of friendship in the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, and the Decameron. It examines friendship not only as the unique love between two persons based on familiarity and proximity, but as the love for the one who is far away, the stranger, for this is a natural extension of the implicit love of the distant other, of the other-as-stranger – what Emmanuel Levinas has called "the infinity of the Other" – which is concealed in our friend, and which, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, puts us "authentically in relation" with him or her.

Blanchot, Maurice (1907–2003)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Caruana
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Experimental Fiction ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Universal Category ◽  
Indeterminate Form ◽  
The Subject ◽  
To Come ◽  
De Man

Maurice Blanchot was one of Europe’s most influential essayists, theorists and experimental fiction writers. Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, notably, represent the major theorists of the second half of the last century who are indebted to Blanchot’s highly original – if not enigmatic – oeuvre. Throughout his life, Blanchot sought to minimize his status as a public figure and at times isolated himself from friends and colleagues. Blanchot’s modernism emphasizes the radical singularity of the artist’s production: the work of art completely thwarts all attempts to subsume it according to some pre-established universal category or identity. For Blanchot, écriture – art in its most indeterminate form – is an expression not of an author who actively and deliberately conceives and creates; rather, it is a reflection of an experience of radical passivity, the futile and always incomplete struggle with mortal existence. The work of art abandons the artist, the poet, the writer, to a state of permanent dislocation and exile. The nomadic nature of the artist’s experience testifies – in accentuated form – to the subject in general. Blanchot speaks famously of la communauté inavouable – the unavow-able or unworkable character of the community that is to come. Though this idea might suggest paralysis, it also speaks to the futility of all totalitarian aspirations. The radical heterogeneity of existence entails the inexhaustibility of humanity’s personal, social and political endeavours.

scholarly journals Utopias of the Text: Pre-Figurations of the Post-Literary

CounterText ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Noys
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Neutral Form ◽  
May 1968

Utopias of the text are the moments of the emergence of a new and radical concept of the text as overflowing all limits and boundaries. Here these utopias are traced in the writings of Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. They often emerge at the margins of these texts, in fragments or boundaries at which the utopia can be glimpsed before disappearing. These utopian moments can be reconstructed as a form of thinking the post-literary and its limits. They can also be traced to the explosion of speech during May 1968 and Maurice Blanchot is a key figure who links together this political moment with the ‘neutral’ form of writing. This article explores the fading of these utopias of the text alongside this draining of political energies. These processes of critique and waning suggest the inversion of utopias of the text into dystopias of the text. Now the sign or signifier appears dispersed or even insignificant compared to the powers and forces of post-literary domination. In this situation, however, the article suggests, the persistence of the utopias of the text as a critical horizon that can still inform how we grasp the equivocations of our post-literary moment.

scholarly journals La voz apocalíptica o primera formulación del imperativo salvaje "ven"

2013 ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Cristina Rodríguez Marciel
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Comme Point ◽  
Donne Lieu

A partir de una recreación ficticia, realizada por la autora de este artículo, de algunos momentos recogidos en las más acreditadas biografías de Jacques Derrida y de Maurice Blanchot y que conciernen al relato expositivo que localiza y reconstruye las circunstancias de la amistad entre ambos, este artículo pretende, en primer lugar, constatar cómo el testimonio biográfico no puede disociarse sin resto de la ficción literaria. De ese modo, la posibilidad misma de la ficción habrá estructurado lo que se conoce como la experiencia real. La amistad conceptualizada como «gracia» procede, sin duda, de una singular experiencia personal de la amistad y ésta no podría ser vivida sin cierto soporte teórico. En segundo lugar, analizaremos cómo ese «pensar y vivir el suave rigor de la amistad», la ley de la amistad, su imperativo, es lo que va a permitir la afirmación de lo otro, el salto a la alteridad cuya primera formulación, en cuanto «imperativo salvaje», se enuncia y se anuncia a través de una voz apocalíptica que dice «ven». En prenant comme point de départ une récréation fictive, élaborée par l’auteur de cet article, de quelques moments de la vie de Jacques Derrida et de la vie de Maurice Blanchot qui ont été extraits de leurs biographies les plus renommées, nous essayons de faire un récit afin de repérer et de reconstruire les circonstances qui ont donné lieu à cette amitié. D’abord, il s’agit dans cet article de vérifier la façon dont le témoignage biographique ne peut pas se dissocier sans reste de la fiction littéraire. Ainsi la possibilité même de la fiction aura organisé ce que nous connaissons en tant qu’expérience réelle. L’amitié conceptualisée comme «grâce» provient sans doute d’une singulière expérience personnelle de l’amitié et celle-ci n’aurait pu être vécue qu’à partir d’un certain soutien théorique. Ensuite, nous analyserons la façon dont un certain «penser et vivre la douce rigueur de l’amitié» – la loi de l’amitié et son impératif – va nous permettre l’affirmation de l’autre, le saut dans l’altérité dont la première formulation, en tant qu’« impératif sauvage », s’énonce et s’annonce à travers une voix apocalyptique qui dit « viens ».

scholarly journals Odnosi treće vrste: kriza, kritika i politika

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelisaveta Blagojević ◽  
Mirjana Stošić
Keyword(s):  
Herman Melville ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Maurice Blanchot

U ovom tekstu biće reči o Blanšoovom (Maurice Blanchot) konceptu odnosa treće vrste i njegovim političkim implikacijama. Ove odnose ne karakteriše neko specifično svojstvo, već upravo odsustvo tih svojstava. Na taj način, autrui izmiče svim tradicionalnim dihotomijama karakterističnim za zapadnoevropsku tradiciju mišljenja: biće i ništavilo, subjekt i objekt, ja i drugi, prisustvo i odsustvo. Rečima Roberta Esposita (Roberto Esposito), Blanšoov autrui je možda najbolje definisati kao ono što je smešteno „na mestu ukrštanja na kom se jedno neprestano prevodi u drugo: ništavilo se prevodi u biće, prisustvo je ispražnjeno odsustvom, unutrašnjost se izliva u spoljašnjost“. Mišljenje i politika koji nisu oruđa moći, vlasti i održanja statusa quo čini se da su, danas više nego ikad, u rukama odnosa „treće vrste“, mesta na kojima se ukrštaju, prepliću i poništavaju pozicije subjekta i objekta, „nečasnih ljudi“, Lokovog (John Locke) papagaja, Deridine (Jacques Derrida) mačke, Nansijevih (Jean-Luc Nancy) „srca“, Melvilovog (Herman Melville) pisara Bartlbija i drugih. Jedino sa ovih mesta moguće je postaviti, toliko neophodna, drugačija pitanja – pitanja na koja su iz današnje perspektive odgovori još uvek nemislivi.

scholarly journals Fragmentos de tempos e espaços

DAPesquisa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 01-18
Author(s):  
Marília Fiúza Queiroz ◽  
Alexandre Rodrigues da Costa
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Maurice Blanchot

Neste artigo, analisamos as obras de Gordon Matta-Clark e Michael Wesely a partir de uma visualidade fragmentada que teve início na relação do sujeito com a câmera escura. Com base nessa visão descontínua e instável do observador, conceituada e relatada por Jonathan Crary, investigamos de que maneira os dois artistas se utilizam da fotografia como uma forma de desagregação dos limites que se estabelecem entre passado e presente, de modo que espaço e tempo tornam-se indeterminados. Utilizamo-nos, assim, das leituras de Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot e Jacques Derrida sobre a ruína, para estudar como a imagem fotográfica se afirma como configurações dilaceradas, ao se oferecer, por meio de sobreposições, ramificações e excessos, como representações obliteradas e incompletas.

scholarly journals Ghosts in the Closet: Catastrophizing and Spectral Disability in Anne Charlotte Robertson’s Apologies

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 142
Author(s):  
Ely
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Manic Depression ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Mental Disability ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Psychological Concept ◽  
Final Scene ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nervous Breakdown ◽  
Organic Coffee

Anne Charlotte Robertson, who died in 2012, was a Super 8 experimental filmmaker whose primarily diaristic films record her experience with a diagnosis of manic depression and the corresponding nervous breakdowns. This article specifically addresses Robertson’s film Apologies (1983–1990), which features 17 min of the filmmaker apologizing to the camera for everything from drinking non-organic coffee to returning her camera a day late to her eventual nervous breakdown in the final scene of the film. Beginning with the psychological concept of catastrophizing, this paper shows how Robertson’s film engages with larger contemporaneous philosophical conceptions of disaster, or apocalypse, and its corresponding temporality. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida and Maurice Blanchot, mental disability is shown to be more thoroughly understood through shifting and multiple temporalities, termed as ‘spectral disability’ within this paper. Apologies not only reveals the personally specific details of Robertson’s experience and identity, but also responds to a larger history of representing madness in photography and film. Robertson’s engagement with the moving image is not only related to philosophy and history, but predates similar techniques devised in psychology as well. Ultimately, through disability theorist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s concept of misfitting, this paper explores how Apologies exposes the creative possibilities of mental disability.

A Future for Theory?

Paragraph ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-153
Author(s):  
Leslie Hill
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
The Future ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Shared Commitment

What is it that guarantees the truth of literary theory? And what is it that testifies to its survival into the future? This paper, intended primarily as a tribute to the work of Malcolm Bowie, examines some of the implications of Bowie's view that literary theory, rigorously applied, as in the case of psychoanalysis, was inseparable from its status as creative, productive, futural, perhaps even fictional performance. The paper considers these questions further in the context of that shared commitment to the neuter or the undecidable that is a striking feature of the writing on literature of Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, and which is also a way of thinking the futural possibilities and possible futures of theory.

scholarly journals Os desastres de uma escritura em chamas

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (56) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Cid Ottoni Bylaardt
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Giorgio Agamben

Caminho como uma casa em chamas, de António Lobo Antunes, é um romance construído como um prédio de apartamentos, de onde emanam as narrativas que se sucedem no livro. Apesar da aparente organização formal, Antunes nos oferece um texto que se esquiva das noções tradicionais de trama romanesca. Os textos são independentes, ainda que dialoguem entre si pela proximidade dos enunciadores, e não se estruturam pela lógica conflito-clímax-desenlace. Este texto pretende mostrar como a narrativa contemporânea compõe suas tramas escriturais, sua escritura em chamas, que se faz de seus desastres, suas ruínas, suas perdas, numa ação negativa de eterna falta, de busca sem fim, de insuficiência da linguagem, de instabilidade do signo. O que chamamos experiência real, assim, é estruturada no romance com fraturas, envolta em chamas, e é aí, na paixão da arte, que a literatura impõe a indecidibilidade entre a ficção e a outra coisa que chamamos mundo. O suporte teórico deste ensaio inclui considerações de Maurice Blanchot, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Didi-Huberman, Emmanuel Levinas e Lélia Parreira Duarte.

scholarly journals O lugar próprio no espaço impróprio: o negro, o judeu e o comum

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (70) ◽  
pp. 175-191
Author(s):  
Paulo Henrique Fernandes Silveira
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
The Common ◽  
Edmond Jabes

O lugar próprio no espaço impróprio: o negro, o judeu e o comum Resumo: No pós-guerra, uma série de intelectuais que residiam na França, alguns deles, como exilados ou expatriados, travaram um intenso debate a respeito das condições do negro e do judeu. Jean-Paul Sartre formulou uma das questões centrais desse debate: haveria uma essência da negritude ou do judaísmo? Para Frantz Fanon, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida e Edmond Jabès, a negritude e o judaísmo podem ser compreendidos a partir das experiências do exílio e da expatriação. Esse artigo pretende reconstruir esse debate e analisar a importância do não-pertencimento para as concepções de comunidade e comum desenvolvidas por Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben e Jacques Rancière. Palavras-chave: Negro. Judeu. Expatriação. Não-pertencimento. Comum. El lugar propio en el espacio impropio: el negro, el judío y el común Resumen: En la pos-guerra, una serie de intelectuales que vivían en Francia, algunos de ellos, como exilados o expatriados, trabaran un intenso debate a respecto de las condiciones del negro y del judío. Jean-Paul Sartre formuló una de las preguntas centrales de ese debate: ¿habría una esencia da negritud o de judaísmo? Para Frantz Fanon, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida y Edmond Jabès, la negritud y el judaísmo pueden ser comprendidos a partir de las experiencias de exilio y de la expatriación. Ese artículo pretende reconstruir ese debate y analizar la importancia del no-pertenencia a las conceptos de comunidad y común desarrolladas por Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben y Jacques Rancière. Palabras-clave: Negro. Judío. Expatriación. No-pertenencia. Común. The proper place in the improper space: the black, the jewish and the common Abstract: In the postwar period, a number of intellectuals residing in France, some of them as exiles or expats, the intellectuals engaged in an intense debate about the conditions of the black and the jewish. Jean-Paul Sartre formulated one of the key questions of this debate: Is there an essence of blackness or judaism? For Frantz Fanon, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, and Edmond Jabès, blackness and judaism can be understood from the experiences of exile and expatriation. This article aims to reconstruct this debate and analyze the importance of non-belonging to the conceptions of community and common developed by Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben, and Jacques Rancière. Keywords: Black. Jewish. Expatriation. Non-belonging. Common. Data de registro: 11/12/2019 Data de aceite: 26/08/2020

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