Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 10:52:33 GMT-1000
Subject: Re: MB: death sentence and derrida


> Date sent:      Mon, 24 Jul 1995 15:33:04 -0600 (CST)
> From:           Christopher Coleman <COLEMAN-AT-library.vanderbilt.edu>
> Subject:        MB: death sentence and derrida
> To:             blanchot-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
> Organization:   Vanderbilt University Library
> Priority:       normal
> Send reply to:  blanchot-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu

> The jacket of my edition of _Death Sentence_ mentions an essay by 
> Derrida on the book.  Does anyone know if this essay has been 
> translated and, if so, where?  Any other English essays that
> deal with the book?  Which of Blanchot's own essays or books 
> might be most helpful in unraveling it?
> 
> It disturbed me deeply, and I'd like to know why.
> 
> Thanks,
> Chris Coleman


Chris.  Derrida's essay is called "Living on/Borderlines" and can 
be found in _Deconstruction and Criticism_ edited by Harold Bloom et 
al (which you might have heard is sometimes called a deconstructive 
manifesto) it also features essays by G. Hartman, J Hillis Miller, 
and Paul de Man. None of the others refer to _Death Sentence_. 
Nonetheless I thought the Hillis Miller essay called "The 
Critic as Host" is particularly good, which leads me to mention Hillis 
Miller's essay on _Death Sentence_ in his _Versions of Pygmalion_.

Of the two pieces on _Death Sentence_ I think the latter is a good 
account of what is going on in literary terms, while still leaving 
open the strangeness of the story.  Derrida's is more "cryptic" 
(excuse the pun) with its double text and the line which keeps them 
apart.  The question posed is one of borders (between life and death;
writing and reading; fiction and criticism to name a few) and the 
suspension, or rupture which necessarily attends those borders. A
suspension which Derrida finds exemplified in the french title of 
Blanchot's recit _L'arret de mort_ with its double sense of 
a sentence of death and a reprieve from that sentence (perhaps this 
is lost in the translation a little?)  I won't go on, except to say
that Derrida points to a passage from Blanchot's _Le pas au-dela_ 
[translated as _The step (not) beyond_] as a possible commentary on 
_Death Sentence_.  Perhaps this will only disturb your reading 
further - certainly Derrida has not intended to relieve any readers 
of this tension, or should I say neuroses which is called reading 
(and sometimes, writing).  If, as I think Blanchot would have it, 
this neuroses is of the impossibility of death, or rather 
the interminability of dying then some sense of _Death Sentence's_ 
strange power to disturb might be grasped (not to mention his other 
writing.) Hope this is of some help. Andrew J.

ps. I would be happy to continue a discussion of Derrida's reading of 
Blanchot - perhaps beginning with a question about how Death Sentence 
comes to be a central feature in a critical work hailed as a 
deconstructive manifesto.  Does Blanchot's work sit easily in this 
company?















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