Clandestine Encounters

Philosophy in the Narratives of Maurice Blanchot

Kevin Hart

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780268081720
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: French Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Maurice Blanchot is perhaps best known as a major French intellectual of the twentieth century: the man who countered Sartre's views on literature, who affirmed the work of Sade and Lautréamont, who gave eloquent voice to the generation of '68, and whose philosophical and literary work influenced the writing of, among others, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault. He is also regarded as one of the most acute narrative writers in France since Marcel Proust.

In Clandestine Encounters, Kevin Hart has gathered together major literary critics in Britain, France, and the United States to engage with Blanchot's immense, fascinating, and difficult body of creative work. Hart's substantial introduction usefully places Blanchot as a significant contributor to the tradition of the French philosophical novel, beginning with Voltaire's Candide in 1759, and best known through the works of Sartre. Clandestine Encounters considers a selection of Blanchot's narrative writings over the course of almost sixty years, from stories written in the mid-1930s to L'instant de ma mort (1994). Collectively, the contributors' close readings of Blanchot's novels, recits, and stories illuminate the close relationship between philosophy and narrative in his work while underscoring the variety and complexity of these narratives.

Contributors: Christophe Bident, Arthur Cools, Thomas S. Davis, Christopher Fynsk, Rodolphe Gasché, Kevin Hart, Leslie Hill, Michael Holland, Stephen E. Lewis, Vivian Liska, Caroline Sheaffer-Jones, Christopher A. Strathman, Alain Toumayan

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE: THE GLORY AND THE ABYSS
• CHAPTER TWO: THE NEUTRAL REDUCTION
• CHAPTER THREE: AMINADAB
• CHAPTER FOUR: A LAW WITHOUT FLESH
• CHAPTER FIVE: THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF BEING
• CHAPTER SIX: WRITING AND SOVEREIGNTY
• CHAPTER SEVEN: ON MINOR READING EVENTS
• CHAPTER EIGHT: THE IMPERATIVE OF TRANSPARENCY
• CHAPTER NINE: “AS THOUGH WITH A NEW BEGINNING”
• CHAPTER TEN: SPACE AND BEYOND
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: WEARY WORDS
• CHAPTER TWELVE: NEUTRAL WAR
• BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WRITINGS BY MAURICE BLANCHOT
• NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX