File spoon-archives/blanchot.archive/blanchot_1998/blanchot.9807, message 17


Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 09:30:29 -0400
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu>
Subject: Re: MB: MB and Ontology


I agree with your formulations; let me specify what I mean in my reference to Husserl, and raise a question.
	The Husserl text I'm thinking of primarily is Idden I (Ideas), paragraphs 109-16 where he discusses the
phenomenological epoche as a nuetrality modification in which all questions of the reality (or unreality) of the world
are set aside and one then analyzes phenomena in terms of their noetic and noematic correlates -- "Fancy" has a
priviledged place in this analysis.  Of course, what Husserl sees coming forward in this neutrality modification are the
*acts of consciousness*, i.e., intentionality, that constitute phenomena.  This concern with acts of consciousness
certainly is not Blanchotian.  But one could say in the language takes on a peculiar importance in the description and
analysis of the phenomena under the epoche.
	It is here that I see a point of possible intervention of Blanchot in Husserl; indeed Husserl never paid much attention
to language per se, and one could say that that is precisely what he should have, methodologically speaking, paid a
great deal of attention to if he wanted to use it rigorously in his descriptions.  What he may have found out is that
many of the ambiguities and problems that he took to be due to the complexities of intentional consciousness are
actually due to language.
	In any event, I think you're right that attention paid to the being of language displaces consciousness (the subject),
but, if this isn't too perverse, I'd like to develop a more fuller 'phenomenological' description of what this is, "the
primacy of word over sense and meaning."  The 'surplus' or 'originality' that is implied in the expression 'primacy' is
something that I'd like to understand better, especially insofar as 'primacy over' doesn't amount to 'unrelated or
indifferent to.' 
	La question la plus profonde' in L'entretien infini would be a fine choice.
	I'm leaving tomorrow for Europe and won't be back for three weeks; I hope to find net access while there, but in any
event, my intermitent responses don't indicate a lack of enthusiasm for continuing these disucssions.  Just adagio.

Regards,
Reg
	

Large.W wrote:
> 
> It is true, I think, to say that language is a neutralisation in
> Blanchot.  And it is equally true that referential language also contains
> a neutralising moment (and I supposed this is what is meant by
> neutralisation in Husserl - though I would need to look at these passages
> again to be sure of this) otherwise there would be no difference between
> the sense of a word and what it refers to in that sense.  But I believe,
> and this is what is most difficult in Blanchot, there is a double
> neutralisation in  literature, both a neutralisation of sense and the
> object, and in this double neutralisation, if one might use such an
> expression in relation to Blanchot, the essence of language is revealed.
>  The essence of language is the primacy of the word over sense or meaning
>  - this is equally a displacement of the subject, or better consciousness,
> if consciousness is interpreted as that which constitutes meaning.  If we
> were to look at the relation between Blanchot and Heidegger, what about
> the essay, 'La question la plus profonde' in L'entretien infini?
> 
> Stawla
> 
>

   

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