The Last Book

A substantial chapter dealing with Blanchot’s last major work, The Writing of the Disaster. Its slow genesis throughout the 1970s is explored, as is its continued experimentation with fragmentary form, and its strong emphasis on ethical issues, and notably the Holocaust (which would mark this later period of Blanchot’s publications).

Life Outside

Starting the final section of the biography, this chapter looks at The Step (Not) Beyond, a fragmentary work produced several years after May 1968. It explores how it recapitulates previous key moments in the writer’s work, retaining a political dimension whilst also furthering its literary experimentation and its philosophical dwellings on death.

Between Two Forms of the Unavowable

Relates an episode concerning Heidegger scholar Jean Beaufret and an anti-semitic remark. Blanchot’s concern to protect his friend Emmanuel Levinas, and his recent links to Jacques Derrida, are in evidence.

A First Homage

Looks at a special issue of the journal Critique, produced in homage to Blanchot in 1966. The chapter goes on to detail the relations between Blanchot and various theoreticians and avant-garde thinkers of the late 1960s, for instance Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and the Tel Quel group.

The Disenchantment of the Community

This chapter sets out aspects of the literary and publishing scene at Liberation. Blanchot participates in various reviews and prize committees.

From Anguish to Language

Focuses on Faux pas, a critical collection bringing together various journal articles in a format that would become familiar to readers of Blanchot. The texts look at literature, often from a philosophical perspective.

Night Freely Recircled, Which Plays Us

Looks at Blanchot’s first novel Thomas the Obscure, including its long genesis throughout the 1930s. The influence of various writers on the novel is evaluated, and the characteristics and importance of fiction for Blanchot are discussed.

Refusal, I: The Revolution of Spirit

Contextualizes the first journals that Blanchot wrote for. These provided the platform for him to begin elaborating a political voice. Various traditions of Left and Right such as Marxism and personalism are discussed.

Even a Few Steps Take Time

This final chapter by Christophe Bident takes in the final years of Blanchot’s life up until 1997; it touches on the deaths of friends and major intellectuals of the era, on his letter-writing (notably on the Holocaust), on the re-publications of his texts, and ends with a brief, fictionalized memoir of 1994, The Instant of My Death.

Making the Secret Uncomfortable

Addresses Blanchot’s fraught relationship with the public persona expected of a writer: his declined interview requests, the lack of photos available until several were published in the 1980s. These are linked to his important thinking around anonymity and the sovereign status of works of art or literature.