Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 09:49:49 -0600
Subject: MB: Derrida on Blanchot


About Derrida on Blanchot.  A few thoughts just to start the discussion:

I always found that Derrida's reading of Blanchot was very similar to his
reading of other authors. Derrida relies heavily on puns (le pas
au-del=E0,for instance, with all the possibilities implied in this title,
etc.),  creative paraphrasis, and a sort of "mimetic" writing that tends to
reproduce the movement of a text ever so slightly twisting it.  The essay
on _L'arret de mort_ is published in French in a collection of three texts
on Blanchot called _Parages_ , and they all work in the same way. These
readings are often illuminating and always brilliantly written.

If one remembers, though, the way in which Blanchot reads other people's
texts, one would start questioning the way in which he has been too easily
assimilated with deconstructive criticism.  Blanchot never takes as his
point of departure linguistic puns, fake etymologies or mimetic writing.
He procedes, it seems to me, in a much more "classical" way, trying to find
in these texts what he deems to be the essence of the "writing exigency".
His approach remains, on my opinion, a phenomomenology of writing much more
than a "deconstructive manifesto". In the _Arret de mort (Death Sentence)_,
this phenomenology of experience encompasses history, relationships and
writing.  In this respect, I resist a bit the deconstructive, essentially
tautological reading that is often given of this and other Blanchot's
texts.

I would love to see what other people think about this.

Giuseppina Mecchia       

Giuseppina Mecchia
gmecchia-AT-rikki.cc.colorado.edu