Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 21:06:00 +0000
From: "Large.W" <stawla-AT-lib.marjon.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: MB: Literature and the Right to Death



In this discussion of the materiality of the word, or the signifier, I   
would like to ask, and I this I think refers to something Leslie said, to   
what extent Blanchot follows Marlllarme in this regard, or not.  I have   
always thought, perhaps quite wrongly, that the source of Blanchot's   
concept of the neuter is Mallarme's negativity.
stawla.

 ----------
From:  owner-blanchot[SMTP:owner-blanchot-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU]
Sent:  05 March 1998 19:11
To:  blanchot
Subject:  Re: MB: Literature and the Right to Death

The remarks about the 'materiality of the signifier' brings to mind two
(perhaps) related issues. 
        The first concerns the difference between the singular and the
particular.  The latter of the two constitues the perceptual 'ground floor' in
Hegel and
 his way of thinking the individual as (virtually) absolute sublatable in the
universal;
the conversion of the particular into the universal is of course of absolute
economic necessity.  One can see why, then, the first moments of the
Phenomenology are so important, because there Hegel demonstrates that perception
is logical, that the seeable is (truer as) the sayable.  Importantly, it is
because of the possibility of this conversion that one is able to establish the
relations among all things, that everything is wholly woven into the world of
comprehensive and comprehendig spirit (the primary achievement of the dialectic
of perception and force and understanding).
        The singular, on the other hand, as we find it in Blanchot and
others,  is even more 'individual' or 'solitary' that is the particular in
Hegel; it is 
as though it slumbers underneath the sayable, beneath the particular.  It seems
that this
severence of the singular from universality and even particularity has much to
do with the 'materialism' of the singular.  My question is about what r
espects, if any, can we speak of the materiality of the image as different from 
the materiality of the word.  It seems that the word can never be as solitary,
as
material, as singular as the visual image; otherwise it looses the conditions
necessary for it being a word -- to speak in terms of Derrida, its iterability.

Doesn't the word occupy, then, a third, perhaps median, position between two
other sorts of 'images'; between representational images and the utterly
intransitive, cadaverous image?
        I was going to introduce some thought here from Derrida's Pit and   
the

Pyramid,
but perhaps I'll save that for later.

Regards,
Reg

L J HILL wrote:
>
> Date:          Wed, 4 Mar 1998 15:21:37 GMT
> To:            blanchot-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
> From:          i.maclachlan-AT-abdn.ac.uk (Ian Maclachlan)
> Subject:       Re: MB: Literature and the Right to Death
> Reply-to:      blanchot-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
>
> >Leslie and all,
> >
> >I think your summary is quite excellent.  Kojeve is in fact a strange
> >blend of Hegel and Heidegger and I agree that in this essay Blanchot
> >is eventually trying to get to an "older than the negative" and to
> >that which escapes both the "power of the negative" (Hegel) and the
> >"possibility of impossibility" (Heidegger) by virtue of a
> >powerlessness to which literature is always already attracted.
> >Literature is attracted to this because it treats language "like a
> >thing": not like an ideal force, but like an "obscure power" [Davis,
> >trans. p 46 from _The Gaze of Orpheus_].  If the word is like a thing
> >and treated like a thing, then the writer is "in" that "older than
> >the negative" and Blanchot is attempting to save from
> >Hegelio-Kojevean pincers of power and negativity. This is the "quest
> >for what comes before" as you quote Blanchot, is it not?
> >
> >Thomas Wall
>
> Thomas probably isn't implying this, but in summarizing Blanchot as
> treating language 'like a thing', 'not like an ideal force', one can
> end up getting close to ascribing a sort of textual materialism to
> Blanchot (much in the same way as this happened with Derrida,
> especially in the light of his 'Tel quel' involvement which put him in
> the company of writers who did seem to be promulgating this notion,
> e.g. Ricardou, Sollers). Whereas, as you say, he's concerned with
> something 'older than the negative' and which weakens the negation
> which allows for clear-cut distinction between, for example, the
> material and the ideal - a powerless power (powerful insofar as it
> evacuates power) which Blanchot likens in the well-known footnote to
> the 'il y a' of Levinas, and which will later assume the name of the
> neuter. Just a final thought which I haven't at the moment got the
> time to follow through properly: in the formulation 'like a thing',
> what would save this from a version of 'materialism of the signifier'
> etc. is perhaps the word 'like': in the sense that another word for
> this powerless power, this power which cannot compete with the power
> of action in the world, might be 'fiction'. Sorry if that's hopelessly
> elliptical. Ian
>
> Ian Maclachlan
> Dept of French
> University of Aberdeen
> i.maclachlan-AT-abdn.ac.uk
>
> I agree entirely with Ian's qualifications.  It's a particular
> feature of MB's readings of Mallarmé, which predate LRD and are
> quietly in the background of that piece, that MB does not rally to
> the absent signified, therefore self-present signifier style of
> reading the absent bllom in Mallarmé.  rather literature is that
> which seeks to disappear, efface itself as indeed power without
> power.  (In the wake of 1968, MB even starts talking about revolution
> without revolution!)
>
> Leslie
>
> force.
> Leslie Hill
> Department of French Studies
> University of Warwick
> Coventry CV4 7AL
> tel: + 44 (0) 1203 523014
> fax: + 44 (0) 1203 524679
> e-mail: l.j.hill-AT-warwick.ac.uk