Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 22:07:07 GMT
Subject: Re: MB: Heidegger


Regarding the relation betwee Blanchot and Heidegger I want to go back to
William Flesch's comment that Blanchot's work can be seen as a critique of
some Heideggerian issues by calling attention to Foucault's essay from Zone
Books's _Foucault/Blanchot_.  In his essay Foucault (following Klossowski)
points out that while Dasein is always already "concerned", "caring",
"solicitous" (all variations on 'Sorge'), in Blanchot's fictions and in his
essays (particularly when he speaks of the image and fascination) the chief
attestations or moods are non-concern, negligence, indifference,
dereliction and attraction.  I have always taken it as axiomatic that
Blanchot has Heidegger in mind here and is attempting to weaken or
criticize that still rather regrettable streak of the tragic that runs
throughout Heideger's _Sein und Zeit_ particularly.  The solicitous Dasein
resolutely becoming authentic through death must strike us, in solidarity
with Blachot, as an unfortunate remnant of German Romanticism.  So I think
Blanchot is exactly right to turn our attention away from such a register
to that which in human life is radically passive (indeed, I think it is
possible, in spite of his language, to read the "logic" of Heidegger's
Sein-zum-Tode as a passivity rather than a resoluteness).

In general, all of Blanchot is about an irreducibly strange weakness.  This
weakness, if you like, ruins the "place" of negativity or of authenticity.
With regard to Lacan and Blanchot's interest in psychoanalysis I agree with
G. Mecchia that the Blanchotian context is very different from Lacan's
since the latter's context does presume mastery, power, and satisfaction
(and remains deeply influenced by Kojeve).  The Blanchotian context must be
seen as contrasting with this (and not as opposing it, or re-defining it)
in the same way that art contrasts with knowing (and is not either a
frustration of knowing nor another kind of knowing).  My own "way" to
Blanchot is always through Levinas's little essay _Realite et son ombre_
(translated in _The Levinas Reader_) and that is where I would encourage
students to begin to think about Blanchot (together, as I have said before,
with _Existence and Existents_).

Unfortunately, I know very little of Blachot's early writings and I confess
I don't know what to say about A. Cools carefully worked out thesis
regarding the Blanchotian ouevre except that somehow it leaves me
speechless.  I don't mean this comment to seem combative or dismissive.  I
guess I would like to know what is the importance of--or the attraction to,
or the fascination with--such research?  I admit there is some fascination,
particularly as Blanchot was intellectually adopted by a Jew (Levinas) and
went on to assist his family.  I believe Shaviro once told me that Levinas
was asked how he could become friends with an anti-semite and he gave an
unsatisfactory answer.  But my memory is cloudy on this.

[As an aside, regarding the relation between Heidegger and ethics (or
Levinas) I know that Jean-Luc Nancy is writing a book on "being-with", and,
as he is an astute reader of Heidegger, Blanchot and Levinas, we should
look forward to his analysis.]

Tom