Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 16:53:04 +0100
Subject: MB: Le cadavre quiconque


"L'image, =E0 premi=E8re vue, ne ressemble pas au cadavre, mais il se pourrait
que l'étrangeté cadavérique f=FBt aussi celle de l'image..."

I was reading through your archives and I came across a discussion
(Jan.-Fev. 1995) about the image of Blanchot. Some were (Shaviro, etc.)
quick to point out the important relation between Blanchot and the question
of "the image" in general. There is an entire appendix, for example, in
L'espace littéraire devoted to "les deux versions de l'imaginaire" and
where one finds several interesting remarks that may be placed in relation
to this photography-graph=E8me discussion: "L'image nous parle, et il semble
qu'elle nous parle intimement de nous. Mais intimement est trop peu dire;
intimement désigne alors ce niveau o=F9 l'intimité de la personne se rompt
et, dans ce mouvement, indique le voisinage mena=E7ant d'un dehors vague et
vide qui est le fond sordide sur lequel elle continue d'affirmer les choses
dans leur disparition. Ainsi nous parle-t-elle, =E0 propos de chaque chose,
de moins que la chose, mais de nous, et =E0 propos de nous, de moins que
nous, de ce moins que rien qui demeure, quand il n'y a rien."

That Blanchot has been photographed is not his problem. As in any
photograph. Or at least, that the photographic image does nothing more to
give itself over to "cette étrangeté" than anything else, this does nothing
to change this image (complex, cadavérique) that Blanchot has throughout
his entire writing been giving over to this "dépouille" known also as
writing. One might ask then, upon learning of a few photographs hanging
around: "et alors?" It is almost as if, here, in the discussion group, we
are witnessing a battle for whose "cadavre" will be the cadavre of
Blanchot.

Un cadavre quiconque. Le cadavre, donc, de qui?

Shall it be the cadavre that Blanchot has "himself" offered to us, that of
"Thomas l'obscur", "L'arr=EAt de mort", "Le pas au-del=E0", etc., etc... Or
shall it be "that" cadavre - the cliché, the snap-shot - that one over
there, just this side of tabloid, or surveillance journalism. Yes it is a
question of authorship: for some, that of who (or what) will be buried in
P=E8re-Lachaise when the time comes (and the time is coming); for others
already a burning question, burning through the pages of books like the ink
used in the second world war in free-Algeria (Thomas l'obscur was itself
printed during the war on fragile paper) that through the ages has left
nothing but holes in the pages, burnt holes there where letters in black
ink once were. "Quelque chose est l=E0 devant nous, qui n'est ni le vivant en
personne, ni une réalité quelconque, ni le m=EAme que celui qui était en vie,
ni un autre, ni autre chose."

In a sense, it is true - as someone suggested in the conference: the
photography question is a minor one, a "game", a little joke, badly played,
on Blanchot. And yet this minor joke is at the same time somehow the entire
question of Blanchot, the entire question of his writing, of his life, of
his "dépouille" that we have come to know as "Blanchot". It is no mistake
that Blanchot, in Thomas l'obscure, in L'arr=EAt de mort, in Celui qui ne
m'acompagne pas, in L'entretien infini, in L'espace littéraire, and so on,
has been conversing with the image - the image as question and the image as
cadavre - in order to disengage it somehow and yet make it cross his own
écriture. Thus no mistake that these same texts are prefaced with the
following biographical sketch: "Maurice Blanchot, romancier et critique,
est né en 1907. Sa vie est enti=E8rement vouée =E0 la littérature et au silence
qui lui est propre." Now, the question is to which silence one must speak
when speaking of Blanchot.

If there are those that are skeptical of the importance of this
biographical insistence, take note. I was informed a little while ago that
when one goes into the files of Gallimard, one finds - naturally - sheets
upon sheets of information on the authors of the maison. Photographs, bios,
itineraries, c.v., etc, etc. But with Blanchot one only finds a little
piece of paper, with the above citation: "Maurice Blanchot, romancier et
critique...." C'est tout.

Blanchot seems to take it all very seriously, then. We are living in a
world filled with a proliferation of images of all genres. Now Blanchot's
face is circulating amongst them. And so, almost as if it were a response
to Levinas and his face of the other, we witness something of a shrug from
Blanchot's part, as if his work itself had already put in circulation this
"face". So what if there is the face of Blanchot. So what if his face is in
circulation. As Blanchot always said, it is not silence that lingers after
the death of an author, but rumor. This rumor has been working his oeuvre
>from the first pas.


Douglas Edric Stanley
Paris. 1 Ao=FBt. 1995.
destanley-AT-Teaser.fr