Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 13:16:00 +1000
Subject: MB: what is desoeuvrement?


anyone out there?

the list has gone quiet lately, so I thought I might take the opportunity to
ask a question or two on desoeuvrement. I can only claim a part-time
interest in Blanchot. My main focus has been Foucault. Nonetheless I am
fascinated by the impact of Blanchot on Foucault, who once said he dreamed
of becoming Blanchot. In the context of this unavowable (Nietzschean)
community, I have been wondering about desoeuvrement and its connections to
the Nietzschean experience and thought of Eternal Return. Has anyone thought
about this connection or read anything about it?

Blanchot makes some kind of connection himself in a few places (mainly the
Infinite Conversation) through his reading of Klossowski's take on Eternal
Return, and Lycette Nelson certainly has a few things to say about it in her
introduction to the Enlgish translation of <Le pas au-dela> (The Step Not
Beyond). The comments are, as usual, as mystifying as they are revealing.
Can anyone Enlighten me or alternatively perhaps further my wanderings?

Extrapolating a little further, and this is perhaps what I am really
interested in, is it possible to comprehend the events of May 1968 through
either desoeuvrement or Eternal Return, as the unworking of the telos of
revolutionary activity? What would the implications for such an
understanding of May 1968 and its aftermath be, if viewed through either of
these notions, in terms of the continuing circulation of Late (New World
Order) Capitalism?

Idleness? Inertia?

sebastian