Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 12:20:20 -0500 (EST)
From: william flesch <FLESCH-AT-BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU>
Subject: Re: MB: My response



Ari worries about a spirit of gravity falling upon the Blanchot list; but I 
think maybe that what people are responding to is the refusal of gravity
on the part of some people here: it's certainly worth considering whether
gravity isn't an essential element in Blanchot's writing (as it is for example
in Simone Weil's) and whether the punning playfulness that people are indulging
in here tends to trivialize something deep in Blanchot.  I sort of think it
does.  Sure, object to Blanchot's gravity if you like, or complicate it, 
or prove that it isn't there, but I think it needs some attention.  Maybe
(I suggest vert hesitantly) one way of distinguishing Blanchot from Bataille
is Blanchot's refusal of familiarity, his deep distrust of tutoiement (GB
may distrust it too, but he doesn't make an issue of it); thus Blanchot writes
with some distaste of the tutoiement that he was engaged in during May 68
with all the other comrades of the rebellion, and distinguishes it from
the austere language of friendship (this in his fairly recent essay "Pour
l'amitie").  At any rate, perhaps we can discuss the question of gravity, 
instead of just assuming that it's out of place, or tyrannical, or a failure
of dissidence and playfulness.


William Flesch