Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 17:56:10 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: MB: Bataille-Blanchot



	One can find an earlier connection between Bataille and Blanchot 
in _The Inner Experience_ under the discussion of "non-savoir." Bataille 
alludes to a conversation he had with Blanchot about inner experience in 
which they both have opposing views:

"Conversation with Blanchot. I say to him: inner experience has neither 
goal, nor authority, which justify it. If I destroy, burst the concern 
for a goal, at the very least, a void subsists. Blanchot reminds me that 
goal, authority are the requirements of discursive thought; I insist, 
describing experience in its extreme form, asking him how he believes 
this to be possible without authority or anything. On the subject of 
authority he adds that it must be expatiated..." (I.E. 53). This, written 
on the eve of the war, comes almost forty years before the enigmatic 
"Writing of the Disaster" by Blanchot. Essentially a monograph on a 
particular kind of event of inner experience, one cannot help but notice 
that he comes to accept Bataille's position (see p.90)--indeed, this may 
be Blanchot's finest tribute to his old friend. He has adopted the 
terminology, the bibliography, and the style of his old compere.

It may also be said, that "guilty" and "inner experience" are tame 
versions of a diary Bataille kept on the occasion of the death of Laure. 
The impact of this event upon Bataille remained with him for the rest of 
his life. It was at her deathbed that she gave him the gift of her 
writings: in particular a scrap of paper upon which was written the 
formula for what was to become one of Bataille's strongest contributions 
to discourse...

Eric