Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 08:24:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: MB: Heidegger


I have read with great interest your message on Blanchot's activities
before and during the war (leaving aside his hegelian inspiration).  As I
am planing to go to Paris this year to read the articles that he
published in L'Insurgé, Aux Ecoutes or Combat, I couldn't but notice the
references you make to "personal letters", a response to Mehlman and an
autobiographical piece.  Where could I find this material (Is it the
fruit of a arduous reasearch on your part in which case I withdraw my
request, or is it " de notoriété publique"?)?
 I believe
that a conference was held in England 3 or 4 years ago, conference
devoted entirely to Blanchot.  Although his "incomparable ami" wasn't
there, Roger Laporte attended.  Does anyone know where to find the
proceedings? I have read the letters surrounding the project of "la Revue
internationale" and am familiar with two extensive bibliographies
(Fran=E7oise Collin and Gramma).  I have also read the "rectification"
he sent to Mehlman (MLN, 95) and, finaly, a answer to BHL. Anyway, please
disregard my request if i am being a bit too "envahissant".
=09Concerning the antisemtism displayed in some of his pre-war
interventions, you say that Blanchot himself didn'y know of the editors'
additions.  If it is indeed the case, why can't we find anywhere a
retractation (which, it seems to me, would not at the time have been made
impossible by a "conception" of writing he fully developed only in the
forties).
=09Blanchot's antisemitism provide us with an explanation which I
tried to illustrate in my dissertation, that of "expiatory experience"
(the dissertation in question is, let me reassure you, written in
French).  Writing would here be considered as an "impossible" biography
torn between two ongoing exigencies, that of a hegelian discourse (une
dialectique, parole de l'un qui reprend le négatif dans une parole du
jour)and of a levinasiann "appel" fo/of the other.
=09And a last question: by creating a clear cut between Blanchot's
"neutre" and Heidegger's being, aren't we making a caricature of Heidegger'
"pensée"?  As Marl=E8ne Zarader points out (Luc Ferry seem to endorse that
view in "La Pensée 68") there is room for making Heidegger's being a far
more elusive concept than his beloved Black Forest seem to lead us to
believe.  Or is it the rereading of a corpus through the political
involvement of its creator?

On Thu, 29 Feb 1996, william flesch wrote:

> I think I don't quite understand what A. Cools means by describing Blanchot's
> 1941 ideal as "defined in a hegelian way by the ethical-esthetical conception
> of harmony and sovereignty."  But I do think that Blanchot's pre-war critical
> writing is mainly of historical and personal (biographical) interest, and as
> a context which might complicate our sense of certain moves or evolutions he
> makes later.  By the time of Le Tres-Haut, however (and it shoulc be stressed
> that Blanchot's fiction is always several years in advance of his critical
> writing), he is explicitly, deeply, powerfully, and decisively rejecting Henri
> Sorge's initial Heideggeran commitments to the ubiquity and ineluctability of
> being.  The il y a, if I'm remembering correctly (I have not here my books about
> me) comes initially in Blanchot in Le Rassessement Eternel, I think in the first
> of those stories, and it's hard for me to see that moment as Hegelian or as
> an ethical-esthetic conception of harmony and sovereignty.  Again, although
> that's pre-war, it's several years in advance of his critical writing.
>
> As to Blanchot's taking responsibility for some of the terrible things he
> allowed to appear over his signature in the thirties, and some of his assoc-
> iations then, it is true that he almost never refers to his own life, and that
> such silence has its conveniences.  But when Jeffery Mehlman informed him that
> he was writing a piece on Blanchot's article on Maurraus written I think in
> 1943, and given Mehlman's earlier work on Blanchot it was anticipated that
> this piece would be critical, Blanchot--to disarm criticism in advance perhaps,
> but still openly--wrote an open letter (through Roger Laporte) to the con-
> ference where Mehlman was to give his piece saying that though he didn't
> remember it, to write about Maurras at the time was inexcusable.  In the event
> Mehlman ended up chalking the piece up to Blanchot's anti-fascist credit.
>
> Blanchot has also, in personal letters, claimed that the anti-semitism to be
> found in some of the thirties journalism was not his but inserted editorially,
> and against his will; a claim that his friendship with Levinas would bolster.
> Blanchot also helped Levinas' wife and children during the war.  As to what
> event in the war might account for a sea-change, if there was one, and that
> would make for Blanchot's turn against a Hegelian-Heideggerean jargon of
> absolutism and authenticity, see "L'instance de ma mort," perhaps his most
> overtly autobiographical work, and which is specific about the historical
> connection to Hegel.
>
> William Flesch
>