Blanchot, Maurice (1907–2003)

Author(s):  
John Caruana

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.

1938 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-95
Author(s):  
A. J. B. Wace

Mrs. Strong in her publication of this head has described it fully and has discussed its place, as a work of art, in the history of Greek scuplture, and it is not my intention to discuss the head from those aspects. It is to be dated, as she has shown, to the second quarter of the fifth century, probably between 470 and 460. It probably represents an Apollo, and chronologically belongs to the group which includes the originals of the Cassel Apollo and the Terme Apollo, both marble copies of bronze originals. As to its stylistic kinship with these or other works, any discussion would be fruitless, for it would be impossible to arrive at any degree of probability in attempting to attribute either the Chatsworth head or the two Apollos mentioned to any one of the Greek artists of that age whose names are known, for we have little or no evidence for their style.The head was acquired by the sixth Duke of Devonshire at Smyrna from H. P. Borrell in 1838, and, according to a note from the vendor, was reported to have been found at Salamis in Cyprus. It would be a natural presumption that a head in the market at Smyrna would have been more likely to come from one of the Greek sites of Western Asia Minor. On the other hand, the mere fact that an unlikely, rather than a likely, provenance was given to the head is in its favour, for there would presumably be no reason to give it an unlikely provenance unless it was correct. So the head may really have come from Salamis in Cyprus. Further excavation at that site may throw more light on the subject. In any case, in the later years of the decade 470-460 B.C. there was a renaissance of Greek influence, especially Attic, in Cyprus after the battle of the Eurymedon.


Labyrinth ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-38
Author(s):  
Dragan Kujundžić

The paper attempts to situate the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky in the tradition of Russian existentialism, and to indicate his influence on the subsequent development of existentialism in its ontological or ethical guise. In fact, Dostoevsky may be seen as the originator of a tradition which will later on influence and be taken up, via Nietzsche and Shestov, by the figures like Emanuel Levinas, Albert Camus or Maurice Blanchot, all explicitly concerned with existentialist questions of debt, guilt or suicide (Kirilov). Dostoevsky's writings are also interpreted in relation to Russian nationalism, and the sense of Russian Messianic election, which at the end of Crime and Punishment coalesce in another destination for Raskolnikov, launching him towards a Messianic future prior to the Abrahamic time and monotheistic sacrificiality. The end of Crime and Punishment imagines another existence for Raskolnikov, before the religious history, or the history tout court, has taken place or time. That time space is akin to something that Jacques Derrida formulated as an advent of an event to-come, a-venir. Dostoevsky is thus, in our interpretation, both a progenitor of the important strains of existentialism, but also a writer returning his hero's existence to an advent of a completely other, time before time, yet to come.


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

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.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 238-262
Author(s):  
Virgil W. Brower

This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipsisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of corporeal self-reflexivity that emerges in the oral sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh.


2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer

Het wordt in de historiografie van de Vlaamse beweging aanvaard dat Hendrik Conscience door de Brusselse progressieve vereniging ‘De Veldbloem’ in 1872 werd gevraagd om te kandideren voor de parlementaire verkiezingen. Conscience zou dat geweigerd hebben. Dit is uiteraard geen onbetekenend feit in de biografie van de man die ‘zijn volk leerde lezen’.Dit gegeven is terug te voeren op de geschriften van Antoon Jacob (°1889) van na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Jacob werd beschouwd als een autoriteit inzake Conscience. Maar waar is het bewijs? Hij verwees daarbij naar “uitvoerige correspondentie” maar die is niet te vinden. Het ADVN slaagde erin om de archivalische nalatenschap van de in 1947 gestorven Jacob te verwerven. Daarin bleken heel wat brieven van en aan Conscience te zitten. De briefwisseling met ‘De Veldbloem’ was onderwerp van deze bijdrage. Daarin is geen spoor te vinden van de poging om Conscience op het politieke strijdtoneel te brengen in Brussel. Daarbij moet de vraag gesteld worden hoe Jacob deze archiefstukken verzamelde en wat ermee is gebeurd tijdens zijn turbulente leven en talrijke omzwervingen. Het is best mogelijk dat er een en ander is verloren gegaan. Toch is deze nalatenschap een belangrijke aanwinst voor de studie van de geschiedenis van de Vlaamse beweging en die van Conscience in het bijzonder. ________ The Brussels association ‘De Veldbloem’ seeks contact with Hendrik Conscience. Two recently discovered letters It is an accepted fact in the historiography of the Flemish Movement that the Brussels progressive Association ‘De Veldbloem’ [=the Wildflower] asked Hendrik Conscience in 1872 to be their candidate for the parliamentary elections. It is said that Hendrik Conscience refused the request. This is of course a very significant fact in the biography of the man ‘who taught his people to read.’ This information may be inferred from the writings of Antoon Jacob (°1889) from the period after the First World War. Jacob was regarded as an authority on Conscience. But where is the evidence of this? In his claim, he referred to ‘extensive correspondence’, but that correspondence is not extant. The ADVN managed to acquire the archival legacy of Jacob who died in 1947. It turned out that it included quite a number of letters to and from Conscience. The exchange of letters with ‘De Veldbloem’ was the subject of this contribution. It contains no trace of the attempt to bring Conscience into the political arena in Brussels. It raises the question how Jacob collected these archival documents and what happened to them during his turbulent life and his many peregrinations.  It is certainly possible that some documents have been lost. However, this legacy is still an important acquisition for the study of the history of the Flemish Movement and of Conscience in particular.


Author(s):  
Andrew Dean

Coetzee’s interest in destabilizing the boundaries of literature and philosophy is most evident in later fictions such as Elizabeth Costello. But as Andrew Dean argues in this chapter, this interest in moving across boundaries in fact originates much earlier, in Coetzee’s quarrel with the institutions and procedures of literary criticism. Coetzee used the occasion of his inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cape Town (Truth and Autobiography) to criticize the assumption that literary criticism can reveal truths about literature to which literary texts are themselves blind. Influenced in part by such figures as Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, Coetzee posed a series of challenging questions about the desires at stake in the enterprise of literary criticism. Developing these thoughts, Dean explores the way in which Coetzee’s earlier fiction, including such texts as Foe (1986), is energized by its quarrelsome relationship with literary criticism and theory, especially postcolonial theory.


Author(s):  
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad

The Introduction outlines the various chapters. It then situates the question of ‘body’ in the modern Western philosophical tradition following Descartes, and argues that this leaves subsequent responses to come under one of three options: metaphysical dualism of body and subject; any anti-dualist reductionism; or the overcoming of the divide. Describing the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty as a potent example of the third strategy, the Introduction then suggests his philosophy will function as foil to the ecological phenomenology developed and presented in the book. Moreover, one approach within the Western Phenomenological tradition, of treating phenomenology as a methodology for the clarification of experience (rather than the means to the determination of an ontology of the subject) is compared to the approach in this book. Since classical India, while understanding dualism, did not confront the challenge of Descartes (for better or for worse), its treatment of body follows a different trajectory.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 121-130
Author(s):  
Julija Metic ◽  
Tim C. McAloone ◽  
Daniela C. A. Pigosso

AbstractThis study undertakes a systematic analysis of literature within Circular Economy (CE) in an industrial perspective, with a focus on understanding the consideration of the biological and technological cycles, as well as dual circularity. The paper articulates the key research differences, gaps and trends on the basis of publication evolution, key subject areas, influential journals and keywords co-occurrence mapping. The analysis shows the increasing publication trend with dominance of technological cycle and a wide variety of subject areas incorporated in CE biological, technological and dual cycles. Due to the multidisciplinary and transversal nature of CE, as well as its diverse interpretation and applications, an expansion and consolidation of the subject areas and journals are expected in the years to come. Analysis of co-occurrence on the authors' keywords underlined a limited focus of a business perspective research within the biological cycle, heterogeneous and proactive technological cycle but fragmented research on dual circularity. Further analysis of synergies and limitations is necessary to enhance business effectiveness towards enhanced sustainability.


2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry McMullin

In the late 1940s John von Neumann began to work on what he intended as a comprehensive “theory of [complex] automata.” He started to develop a book length manuscript on the subject in 1952. However, he put it aside in 1953, apparently due to pressure of other work. Due to his tragically early death in 1957, he was never to return to it. The draft manuscript was eventually edited, and combined for publication with some related lecture transcripts, by Burks in 1966. It is clear from the time and effort that von Neumann invested in it that he considered this to be a very significant and substantial piece of work. However, subsequent commentators (beginning even with Burks) have found it surprisingly difficult to articulate this substance. Indeed, it has since been suggested that von Neumann's results in this area either are trivial, or, at the very least, could have been achieved by much simpler means. It is an enigma. In this paper I review the history of this debate (briefly) and then present my own attempt at resolving the issue by focusing on an analysis of von Neumann's problem situation. I claim that this reveals the true depth of von Neumann's achievement and influence on the subsequent development of this field, and further that it generates a whole family of new consequent problems, which can still serve to inform—if not actually define—the field of artificial life for many years to come.


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