File spoon-archives/blanchot.archive/blanchot_1998/blanchot.9805, message 12


Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 21:30:00 +0000
From: "Large.W" <stawla-AT-lib.marjon.ac.uk>
Subject: MB: RE: RE: LRD



Because for Blanchot engagment presupposes a bridge between the work and   
the world which literature radically calls into question.
stawla

 ----------
From:  owner-blanchot[SMTP:owner-blanchot-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU]
Sent:  08 May 1998 14:29
To:  'blanchot-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU'
Subject:  MB: RE: LRD


I do not quite understand the exteriority of the work to the world; is that to
say that the work is considered something metaphysical? And, you claim that "He
says he writes books for others.  But he is lying, for if he really were for
others then he would not be a writer".
    
But that seems to be begging the question, as it presupposes the conclusion of
the argument. Why should Sartre be so wrong in giving an account of the
engagement of the work to the world?
Yours Ulli

 -----Original Message-----
From:   Large.W [SMTP:stawla-AT-lib.marjon.ac.uk]
Sent:   Friday, May 08, 1998 1:44 AM
To:     'Blanchot list'
Subject:        MB: LRD


Let us look at the dialectic, or hyper-dialectic to use Merleau-Ponty's   
expression, of the writer again.  The question is whether the writer  
belong to this world (the world of events, causes, commitments) or not.   
 The writer wants to belong to this world.  He says he writes books for   
others.  But he is lying, for if he really were for others then he would   
be not be a writer.  So the writer just writes then?  Is this what makes   
him authentic.  But there is a twist.  The more the writer throws himself  
into the centre of the work, the more the work turns towards the world.   
 The work and the world are neither the same nor opposed to one another,   
rather they are interlaced.  The writer and the reader cannot be 
separated and opposed to one another rather they are all moments of what   
we might call the work.  This means that neither the writer nor the 
reader can have any precedence over one another.  What we have to avoid   
is the Hegelian temptation (which is philosophy's temptation) of 
thinking that the work, at some higher level, is the unity of the writer and
the   
reader.  The movement here is one of constant opposition in which there   
can be no reconciliation.  Thus the writer can never be authentic.
stawla

   

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