Maurice Blanchot: Literature as the Space of Politics

Abstract

Literature (art) and politics are often compared and brought together, inasmuch as they both engage with, transform, and renounce the human world as it is, and as they both share—in their key moments—a world disclosing power that allows them to generate a world that was not. The events of May ’68 foster a further affinity with writing: the numerous slogans—whose echo, variations, and relevance are still sensed—bear witness to a complicit pact between words (in their artistic inscription as graffiti) and political upheaval. Yet, this paper attempts to revitalize the relationship of art and politics, by drawing on Maurice Blanchot’s view of literature as a sovereign—insubordinate to worldly, and political, causes—realm. With particular reference to some of Blanchot’s key texts, which preceded—and foretold the success/failure of—May ’68, this paper explores how literature and literary criticism become radically political in their autonomy, that is, in their turning toward (against) themselves, as forces of opposition that contest their conditions of (im)possibility. Unfolding Blanchot’s idiosyncratic account of literature as ‘committed non-commitment’ (dégagement engagé), this paper will contend that the essence of the political as a profound refusal, as put forth by the anti-authoritarian call of May 1968, is realized in and as the experience of literature.

Keywords:

• Autonomy
• impossibility
• power(less)
• contestation
• interrogation
• negation

Notes

1 In a brief presentation of his immense biographical essay, Bident writes: “Dominante et marginale, telle est la place qu’est venue occuper au fil du vingtième siècle l’œuvre narrative, critique et philosophique de Maurice Blanchot” (Bident, “Blanchot”). The presentation is available online: http://www.blanchot.fr/fr/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=42.

2 Repudiating the mediatisation and exhibition of a writer as a celebrity, refusing to give interviews or be photographed, and choosing instead to remain aloof from public life, Blanchot anticipates the notoriously reclusive cases of J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon.

3 As quoted by Blanchot in his essay “Kafka et la Littérature” in La Part du feu, p. 20.

4 The term “une saine politique” is coined by Blanchot in the 1930s. It appears in his article “Les Écrivains et la politique.” Journal des débats, 27 July 1932, p. 1.

5 For a detailed and subtle account of Blanchot’s political itinerary throughout the 1930s see Bident, Maurice 60–102.

6 For a discussion of Blanchot’s political engagement in the major events of post-war France that preceded May ’68, namely his opposition to Gaullism and to the Algerian war, in 1958 and 1960 respectively, see Bident, Maurice 376–402; Hamel 71–72, 89–92.

7 See Bident, Maurice 469–483; Hamel 23–46.

8 Hannes Opelz chronologically locates this shift in 1937. More crucially, Opelz explores this turning point in Blanchot’s thought as a turn in the relationship between literature and politics. See Opelz, Hannes. “The Political Share of Literature: Maurice Blanchot, 1931–1937.” Paragraph, vol. 33, no. 1, 2010, pp. 70–89.

9 Michael Holland’s concluding remark in his review of Hamel’s book reads as follows: “Le jour viendra sans doute où, cessant de considérer que politiquement Maurice Blanchot a quelque chose à cacher, on discernera dans sa longue carrière les prodromes de la pensée politique que notre ère attend” (Holland).

10 Maurice Blanchot, “La Puissance et la gloire” (1958) in Le Livre à Venir.

11 For an excellent account of how the political (meant as a force of contestation) contributes, in Blanchot’s case, to a renewed conception of literary criticism, see Opelz, “The Political Share of Literature” 82–85.

12 “Soyez réalistes, demandez l’Impossible” and “L’Imagination au pouvoir.”

13 “[…] elle [la Terreur] est la littérature, ou du moins son âme” (Blanchot, “Comment la littérature est-elle possible?,” Faux pas 97).

14 “[…] plus il [l’écrivain] lutte contre les lieux communs, plus il leur est soumis” (Blanchot, “Comment” Faux Pas 99).

15 More particularly, I am referring to Agamben’s The Coming Community, Nancy’s La Communauté desœuvrée, Mouffe’s Dimensions of Radical Democracy, and Rancière’s La Mésentente. All these subsequent attempts to reconfigure community and politics (beyond essence, presence, identity, consensus) can be seen as heirs to Blanchot’s line of thought.

16 “en niant quelque chose de réel, de plus réel que les mots” (Blanchot, “La Littérature et le droit à la mort,” La Part du feu 308).

17 Blanchot designates the power of literature as “un pouvoir vide,” “pouvoir sans pouvoir” (Blanchot, “La Littérature” La Part du feu 320).

18 “la chose était là, que nous saisissions dans le mouvement vivant d’une action compréhensive,—et devenue image, instantanément la voilà devenue l’insaisissable […]” (Blanchot, “Les Deux versions de l’imaginaire,” L’Espace littéraire 343).

19 “[…] cette chose comme éloignement, la présente dans son absence, […] apparaissant en tant que disparue” (Blanchot, “Les Deux” L’Espace littéraire 343).

20 It should be noted that most of the essays which are published in L’Entretien infini were written between 1953 and 1965.

21 As he writes, “[…] dans une parenthèse qui se signalant, signalera la justesse et l’importance de sa forme: parenthèse de la loi, pli secret du langage, suspension de l’Histoire” (Bident, Maurice 476).

22 With regard to Blanchot’s conception of revolution in terms of language (of language as revolutionary), we read: “L’inorganisation malheureuse de la foule, cette immense impuissance commune […] se retourne en exigence. […] Retournement qui s’accomplit dans et par la parole” (“La Question la plus profonde” (1961), L’Entretien infini 30). The event of May ’68 has been interpreted as a “prise de parole” most notably by Michel de Certeau (“Pour une nouvelle Culture. Le Pouvoir de parler.” Études, vol. 10, 1968, pp. 383–403). Similarly, Hamel draws attention to the fact that throughout 1968, through slogans, mural inscriptions, and leaflets, an oppositional public space emerges in which the production, circulation, and control of speech is contested (Hamel 97–108).

23 Blanchot, “L’Athéisme et l’écriture. L’Humanisme et le cri” (1963) in L’Entretien Infini.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zoe Angelis

Zoe Angelis is a Ph.D. candidate in the French Department at Cambridge, supervised by Dr. Ian James. Her project entitled “Critical encounters: Blanchot, Bataille and the Literary Real” examines both the question of what kind of real is addressed in writing as well as the question of writing's own “being” (its peculiar reality/irreality). She is the co-editor, with Blake Gutt, of the collective volume of essays entitled Stains/Les Taches which was published by Peter Lang in July 2019. Her research interests include questions of embodiment, time, vision, imagination as well as the production and registration of more or less irrecuperable experience.