Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 13:16:33 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: MB: passivity


In The Writing of the Disaster Blanchot writes:

"Passivity is not simple receptivity, any more than it is formless and
inert matter ready for any form.  Passive are the throes of dying (dying,
silent intensity; that which cannot be welcomed, which is inscribed
wordlessly; the body in the past, the body of no one, of the interval:
being's suspense, a seizure like a cut in time, which we can not evoke
except as wild, unnarratable history having no meaning in any present).
Passive: the un-story, that which escapes quotation and which memory does
not recall -- forgetfulness as thought.  that which, in other words,
cannot be forgotten because it has always already fallen outside memory.

My question is how is Blanchot's notion of passivity posited in
relationship to a practice of writing/reading?  How does Blanchot's
critique of Hegel operate in a textual register?  Does it at all resemble
Bataille's sovereignty?

de Man refers to the Blanchotian tactic of interpretation that "adds
nothing to what was already there."  Is this passivity?  How does
passive writing travel beyond intersubjective models of textual
interpretation?