Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1998 18:38:21 -0600
Subject: Re: MB: MB early morning thought


Jay Ludwig wrote:

> Blanchot's wanting to name the unnamable is like Sade's terminal
> theological "perversion", sodomy, it is the desire of total destruction, of
> suicide, since it is him who is the writer/God of words, therefor it is God
> destroying his creation by creating it.

Having just read _The Space of Literature_, I have to question this.  Blanchotthere specifically interrogates suicide
(at length) and creation (briefly, and I think).
But destruction is also prominent in _The Writing of the Disaster_ and thematic
in a brief critical essay on Duras (in _Friendship_).  Enough bibliography.  To
create, even if it is to create destruction (such as in suicide) is to engage in the
projects of the day and of consciousness, their ends (death, the night) notwithstanding.
In fact, Blanchot writes of how these projects fail to achieve their end, which would
be to subjugate the night to the day, to confine it.  See the long section on Mallarme
and death in _Space_.  How can Blanchot share a theological conviction when he
writes in the absence of even the absence of gods?

> we could wonder why - is it Dionysos ( seen as god of creation ) that's

> testing him to see if he would sacrifice his only son? but to who/what?

What are you talking about?

> why does maurice blanchot have this fixation on destruction, nihilism and
> nothingness. why is it that the major thoughts of this century revolve
> around what is not? why think of the unthinkable? why write about the
> unwritable? what chase is it?

There are many replies to this.  It could be that Heidegger's prophesizing wasactually quite accurate, that the
beginning of history is becoming clearer to us
because we are approaching the end.  It could be French nausea.  It could be
that the situation today allows for only two alternatives:  building the monad and
taking cover from it.  Perhaps Blanchot's is the only way to escape "the madness
of the day."

> it could just be what is left to think after thoughts' death.
> this is the experience of the wake/mourning of l'écriture - so I think that
> is.

Personally, I don't think thought is dead, just the idea of thought.  Thought itselfis far too alive.  In fact, it
constitutes a large and growing sector of the world economy.  The idea of no idea, however, seems to me very alive, as
alive as it is powerless
and unproductive.

Wynship Hillier