Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 14:23:43 GMT
Subject: Re: MB: Academics


>
>I find this obsession with the academic and non-academic divide   
>troubling. 

So do I, but 'obsession' is what those of us outside academia suffer from,
otherwise we would read the Reader's Digest, not Blanchot!  As for the
specific point, the essays I have read by academics TEND to understand the
'creative' thing only rhetorically. One senses the pressure behind
Blanchot's words yet not in the very similar ones used to frame him for
seminars. No matter how much I respect the rigour with which those work in
the academy approach Blanchot's work, it tends to lack the very thing that
makes Blanchot compelling (apart from his fiction, which I find mortifyingly
dull).

I say tend: in the book of essays published by Yale French Studies, 'The
Place of MB', Denis Hollier stands out from the rest, so I recommend that to
Claire Dinsmore.  The editor of the book, Thomas Pepper, also seems
interesting but I get lost when reading him.







steve m

http://www.spikemagazine.com/