Ending and Unending Agony

On Maurice Blanchot

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Hannes Opelz

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780823264599
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Deconstruction in Philosophy

Published posthumously, Ending and Unending Agony is Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's only book entirely devoted to the French writer and essayist Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003). The place of Blanchot in Lacoue-Labarthe's thought was both discreet and profound, involving difficult, agonizing questions about the status of literature, with vast political and ethical stakes.Together with Plato, Holderlin, Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Heidegger, Blanchot represents a decisive crossroads for Lacoue-Labarthe's central concerns. In this book, they converge on the question of literature, and in particular of literature as the question of myth—in this instance, the myth of the writer born of the autobiographical experience of death.However, the issues at stake in this encounter are not merely autobiographical; they entail a relentless struggle with processes of figuration and mythicization inherited from the age-old concept of mimesis that permeates Western literature and culture. As this volume demonstrates, the originality of Blanchot's thought lies in its problematic but obstinate deconstruction of precisely such processes.In addition to offering unique, challenging readings of Blanchot's writings, setting them among those of Montaigne, Rousseau, Freud, Winnicott, Artaud, Bataille, Lacan, Malraux, Leclaire, Derrida, and others, this book offers fresh insights into two crucial twentieth-century thinkers and a new perspective on contemporary debates in European thought, criticism, and aesthetics.

Notes

Translator’s Note

1. Michael Syrotinski, “Fidelities,” Oxford Literary Review 22, no. 1 (July 2000), special issue: “Disastrous Blanchot,” 132–151; Philip Anderson, “The Contestation of Death,” in The Power of Contestation: Perspectives on Maurice Blanchot, ed. Kevin Hart and Geoffrey Hartman (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 141–155.

2. Alain Badiou, “‘Dits’ de Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe,” Lignes, n.s., 22 (May 2007), special issue: “Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe,” 19 (my translation).

3. Thomas Mann, “Freud and the Future,” trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter, in Essays of Three Decades (London: Secker and Warburg, 1947), 411–428; Thomas Mann, “Freud und die Zufunkt” (1936), in Gesammelte Werke in Dreizehn Bänden (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1974), 9:478–501.

4. On é-loignement, see Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Obliteration,” trans. Thomas Trezise, in The Subject of Philosophy, ed. Thomas Trezise (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 62–72; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “L’oblitération” (1973), in Le sujet de la philosophie (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1979), 122–138; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Il faut,” in Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry, trans. Jeff Fort (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 38–59; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Il faut” (1992), in Heidegger. La politique du poème (Paris: Galilée, 2002), 79–115; and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “In the Name of . . . ,” in Retreating the Political, ed. and trans. Simon Sparks (London: Routledge, 1997), 55–78; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “À Jacques Derrida—Au nom de . . .” (1980), in L’imitation des modernes. Typographies II (Paris: Galilée, 1986), 229–255.

5. See Lacoue-Labarthe, “Obliteration,” 62–72; Lacoue-Labarthe, “L’oblitération,” 122–138.

6. See Martin Heidegger, Identité et différence (1957), trans. André Préau, in Questions I et II (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 298n1. For an English translation, see Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 64.

7. See Jacques Lacan, Anxiety: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A. R. Price (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), 12–13; Jacques Lacan, Le séminaire, livre X. L’angoisse (1962–1963), ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (1982; Paris: Le Seuil, 2004), 21–23.

8. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “The Echo of the Subject,” trans. Barbara Harlow, in Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics (1989), ed. Christopher Fynsk (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), 189; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “L’écho du sujet” (1975–1976), in Le sujet de la philosophie, 277.

9. See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Poetry as Experience, trans. Andrea Tarnowski (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 20; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, La poésie comme expérience (Paris: Bourgois, 1986), 33.

10. Antonin Artaud, notebook entry for April 14, 1946, Cahiers de Rodez, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 26:64.

11. Lacoue-Labarthe, “The Echo of the Subject,” 196; Lacoue-Labarthe, “L’écho du sujet,” 285.

12. See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Typography,” trans. Eduardo Cadava, in Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, 43–138; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Typographie,” in Mimesis des articulations (Paris: Flammarion, 1975), 165–270; and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “La figure (humaine)” (1992), in Écrits sur l’art, posthumous ed. (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2009), 189–199.

13. See Lacoue-Labarthe, “Il faut,” 38–59; Lacoue-Labarthe, “Il faut,” 79–115.

14. See Jacques Derrida, “Desistance,” trans. Christopher Fynsk, in Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, 1–42; Jacques Derrida, “Désistance” (1989), in Psyché, Inventions de l’autre (Paris: Galilée, 2003), 2:201–238.

15. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “The Courage of Poetry,” in Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry, 76; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Le courage de la poésie” (1993), in Heidegger. La Politique du poème, 146....

Table of contents

• Contents
• Translator’s Note
• Introduction
• Prologue
• I. "The Secret Miracle" (20 July?)
• Fidelities
• The Contestation of Death
• Annexes
• II. Ending and Unending Agony (22 September?)
• Ending and Unending Agony
• Appendix
• [In 1976, Malraux . . .]
• Interview with Pascal Possoz
• Dismay
• Notes
• Bibliographical Note
• Index of Names