File spoon-archives/blanchot.archive/blanchot_1999/blanchot.9907, message 5


From: "Claude Caspar" <claudecaspar-AT-email.msn.com>
Subject: MB: RE: PhD Thesis on Blanchot, Levinas, and Derrida
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 18:57:30 -0400


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Ha!  I was so excited I misread your post.  I have read your proposal and
find it cogent.  All I can say on the fly is that I am touched that we have
traveled down the same paths.  Trilling means alot to me, for example.
  -----Original Message-----
  From: owner-blanchot-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-blanchot-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of Paul Wake
  Sent: Monday, July 26, 1999 5:18 PM
  To: blanchot-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Subject: MB: PhD Thesis on Blanchot, Levinas, and Derrida


  Hi

  I'm new to this BLANCHOT forum and I hope that my message fits in with the
idea of the thing.
  My name is Paul Wake and I have just completed my Masters in Critical
Theory at Manchester Metropolitan University where I am soon to start my PhD
in the department of English.  The provisional title of my thesis is:

  Death in the Modern Novel: Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Jacques Derrida,
Maurice Blanchot, and Emmanuel Levinas

  I thought I would just post my PhD proposal and see if any of you think
it's interesting enough to comment on.  I'm really keen to hear any advice,
suggested reading etc.  For what it's worth here is my proposal, no doubt it
will change dramatically over the next three years:
  Simon Critchley’s Very Little ... Almost Nothing, his discussion of death
in philosophy and literature, opens with the assertion that philosophy
begins in disappointment. This is a disappointment born from the realisation
that religion can no longer be looked to as a guarantee of meaning.
Critchley sites this shift temporally, ‘the proper name for this breakdown
is modernity.’ The cultural shifts that led to this disappointment and mark
the beginning of the modern period have been well documented, characterised
by the triumph a largely empirical and sceptical science over religion.
Darwin’s work placed man on a biological par with the rest of nature, Freud
introduced a probable and profoundly disturbing irrationality into human
behaviour, whilst philosophy showed a clear movement away from system
building metaphysics towards linguistic and analytic forms. The moral
certainties of the Victorian age were thrown into a doubt that would
percolate through the work of the modern artist both thematically and
stylistically.

  In this new cultural climate the question of death, of the approach to
death, and of the possibility of one’s own death, takes on new significance.
Whilst modern philosophy has moved away from metaphysics modern, and
post-modern, culture cannot be said to be post-metaphysical and there is an
attempt in much literature, and criticism, to think the world in a coherent
way in the absence of God. This ‘new’ relation to death finds its best
expression in the art of the modern period and it is this period that I
shall consider in this study of death.

  Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster have long been accepted as key figures of
literary modernism, showing in their writing a keen awareness of their
changing culture. Forster’s now well discussed liberal humanism and his
overwhelming concern with human ‘connection’ makes the question of death,
which through Blanchot becomes a question of relation to the Other,
particularly interesting. Conrad, who displayed a great deal of scepticism
towards religion, approaches death in a more direct way, connecting it with
darkness, language and truth. The two texts that are central to this
discussion are Heart of Darkness (1902) and A Passage To India (1924). Both
novels are concerned with questions of otherness and death and, not without
significance, both displace the site of death’s possibility - to the Belgian
Congo and India respectively.

  Whilst Heart of Darkness lends itself readily to a psychoanalytic approach
it is not necessary to interpret the text in this way to discover a
preoccupation with death - its 121 pages are littered with representations
of death. Whilst Marlow’s narrative clearly directs attention to the pivotal
death of Kurtz and subsequently to his own near death the events of his
journey upriver are marked by the presence of death. Variously Marlow
recalls: a Swede who hangs himself, the dying slaves in the ‘grove of death,
’ the ‘agent from up-country’ whose dying is an irritation in corner of the
accountant’s office, a ‘middle-aged Negro, with a bullet hole in the
forehead,’ the ‘fool-helmsman’ who dies in a battle with the ‘natives,’ and
the shrunken heads on poles that link Kurtz inextricably with death. Through
the presentation of these deaths it becomes clear that there is a great
difference between the question of one’s own death and the death of the
other.

  Lionel Trilling expressed uncertainty as to whether Kurtz’s last words,
‘The horror! The horror!’ refer to the approach of death or to his
experience of savage life. Reading Heart of Darkness alongside The Infinite
Conversation the distinction between the becomes less straight forward, the
source of horror coming from the impossible encounter with that beyond the
self. The real interest for Marlow’s story lies in the comparison between
Kurtz’s and his own approach to death. By contrast Marlow writes of his own
experience: ‘I have wrestled with death... in an impalpable greyness... I
was within a hairsbreadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I
found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.’ Whilst
Marlow sees Kurtz as heroic in his response to death, Conrad allows him to
reflect, ‘he [Kurtz] had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted
to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps this is the whole difference:
perhaps all the wisdom, and all the truth, and all the sincerity, are just
compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the
threshold of the invisible.’ Here Marlow expresses the aporia that is the
moment of death and provides what remains one of modern literature’s most
powerful articulations of death as it is experienced in the disappointment
of religion. Now death becomes an impossible, impassable, limit with quite
radical implications for knowledge and truth.

  Whilst Forster’s A Passage To India is not so overtly concerned with death
it is a novel much concerned with absence and the disruption of unity. The
varying approaches taken by critics to the triad structure of A Passage To
India is particularly interesting with the majority attempting to draw unity
and coherence from Mosque, Caves and Temple. More recently the novel has
been seen to challenge this drive for unity and coherence in its insistence
on absence, in particular in the Marabar Caves sequence, regarded by many as
the core of the novel, which offers itself up to deconstructive readings. In
the nondescript darkness of one of the Marabar caves Mrs Moore experiences
an unsettling epiphany in which she discovers nihilism and death and finds
them ‘utterly dull’. This recalls Marlow’s approach to death, formless and
incomprehensible. ‘Motionless with Horror’ Mrs Moore feels that ‘Pathos,
piety, courage - they all exist, but are identical, and so is filth.
Everything exists, nothing has value’ a response that could be restated in
the words of Kurtz as simply, ‘The horror!’

  Whilst Conrad and Forster are central to the canon of modernist literature
and their works have been the site of much critical discussion, positions
towards them are constantly shifting. Recent developments in critical theory
have opened up new ways

  of approaching literature, drawing increasingly upon the tools of
philosophy and linguistics. Understanding the question of death demands the
understanding of recent developments in critical theory and in the study of
Conrad and Forster it becomes desirable to draw upon the work of Jacques
Derrida, Maurice Blanchot, and Emmanuel Levinas.

  Whilst Jacques Derrida has been studied at length his contemporary Maurice
Blanchot has until relatively recently been little discussed. A great many
similarities can be seen in the work of Derrida and Blanchot, particularly
in their discussions of language and of the Other. Whilst Blanchot’s work
can be shown to have influenced Derrida’s thinking it is also clear that
many of their works’ similarities derive from Emmanuel Levinas. All three of
these philosophers consider the relationship of the subject with Death:
Derrida in Aporias and The Gift of Death, Blanchot in The Infinite
Conversation and Levinas in Time and The Other and Totality and Infinity.
For Levinas death is the ‘absolutely unknowable’ that is the limit of the
subject’s virility - this is the point from which both Derrida and Blanchot
come to regard death as absolutely ‘other’, the relationship to death
prefiguring the relationship to the self. The following quotation from
Levinas illustrates the way in which the three philosophers place death in
relation to the self and the other:

  The object that I encounter is understood and, on the whole, constructed
by me, even though death announces an event over which the subject is not
master, an event in relation to which the subject is no longer a subject.

  The question inferred in such a philosophy is that of the aporetical
obligation to host the foreign and the alien and yet to respect him, her, or
it as foreign. The way in which Derrida and Blanchot situate the subject
within language makes the relation to the other as other extremely
problematic and it at this point that orherness and death are linked.

  My proposal is to consider the various manifestations of death in the
novels of Conrad and Forster, reading from a perspective informed by the
work of Derrida and Blanchot, in the light of Levinas. I want to argue that
the question of the other is central to the question of death, re-reading
these texts from this theoretical perspective will allow this relationship
to become apparent.



  Thanks for taking the time to read this thing,

  regards - Paul Wake.


HTML VERSION:

Ha!  I was so excited I misread your post.  I have read your proposal and find it cogent.  All I can say on the fly is that I am touched that we have traveled down the same paths.  Trilling means alot to me, for example. 
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-blanchot-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu [mailto:owner-blanchot-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of Paul Wake
Sent: Monday, July 26, 1999 5:18 PM
To: blanchot-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: MB: PhD Thesis on Blanchot, Levinas, and Derrida

Hi
 
I'm new to this BLANCHOT forum and I hope that my message fits in with the idea of the thing.
My name is Paul Wake and I have just completed my Masters in Critical Theory at Manchester Metropolitan University where I am soon to start my PhD in the department of English.  The provisional title of my thesis is:
 
Death in the Modern Novel: Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot, and Emmanuel Levinas
 
I thought I would just post my PhD proposal and see if any of you think it's interesting enough to comment on.  I'm really keen to hear any advice, suggested reading etc.  For what it's worth here is my proposal, no doubt it will change dramatically over the next three years:

Simon Critchley’s Very Little ... Almost Nothing, his discussion of death in philosophy and literature, opens with the assertion that philosophy begins in disappointment. This is a disappointment born from the realisation that religion can no longer be looked to as a guarantee of meaning. Critchley sites this shift temporally, ‘the proper name for this breakdown is modernity.’ The cultural shifts that led to this disappointment and mark the beginning of the modern period have been well documented, characterised by the triumph a largely empirical and sceptical science over religion. Darwin’s work placed man on a biological par with the rest of nature, Freud introduced a probable and profoundly disturbing irrationality into human behaviour, whilst philosophy showed a clear movement away from system building metaphysics towards linguistic and analytic forms. The moral certainties of the Victorian age were thrown into a doubt that would percolate through the work of the modern artist both thematically and stylistically.

In this new cultural climate the question of death, of the approach to death, and of the possibility of one’s own death, takes on new significance. Whilst modern philosophy has moved away from metaphysics modern, and post-modern, culture cannot be said to be post-metaphysical and there is an attempt in much literature, and criticism, to think the world in a coherent way in the absence of God. This ‘new’ relation to death finds its best expression in the art of the modern period and it is this period that I shall consider in this study of death.

Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster have long been accepted as key figures of literary modernism, showing in their writing a keen awareness of their changing culture. Forster’s now well discussed liberal humanism and his overwhelming concern with human ‘connection’ makes the question of death, which through Blanchot becomes a question of relation to the Other, particularly interesting. Conrad, who displayed a great deal of scepticism towards religion, approaches death in a more direct way, connecting it with darkness, language and truth. The two texts that are central to this discussion are Heart of Darkness (1902) and A Passage To India (1924). Both novels are concerned with questions of otherness and death and, not without significance, both displace the site of death’s possibility - to the Belgian Congo and India respectively.

Whilst Heart of Darkness lends itself readily to a psychoanalytic approach it is not necessary to interpret the text in this way to discover a preoccupation with death - its 121 pages are littered with representations of death. Whilst Marlow’s narrative clearly directs attention to the pivotal death of Kurtz and subsequently to his own near death the events of his journey upriver are marked by the presence of death. Variously Marlow recalls: a Swede who hangs himself, the dying slaves in the ‘grove of death,’ the ‘agent from up-country’ whose dying is an irritation in corner of the accountant’s office, a ‘middle-aged Negro, with a bullet hole in the forehead,’ the ‘fool-helmsman’ who dies in a battle with the ‘natives,’ and the shrunken heads on poles that link Kurtz inextricably with death. Through the presentation of these deaths it becomes clear that there is a great difference between the question of one’s own death and the death of the other.

Lionel Trilling expressed uncertainty as to whether Kurtz’s last words, ‘The horror! The horror!’ refer to the approach of death or to his experience of savage life. Reading Heart of Darkness alongside The Infinite Conversation the distinction between the becomes less straight forward, the source of horror coming from the impossible encounter with that beyond the self. The real interest for Marlow’s story lies in the comparison between Kurtz’s and his own approach to death. By contrast Marlow writes of his own experience: ‘I have wrestled with death... in an impalpable greyness... I was within a hairsbreadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.’ Whilst Marlow sees Kurtz as heroic in his response to death, Conrad allows him to reflect, ‘he [Kurtz] had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps this is the whole difference: perhaps all the wisdom, and all the truth, and all the sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.’ Here Marlow expresses the aporia that is the moment of death and provides what remains one of modern literature’s most powerful articulations of death as it is experienced in the disappointment of religion. Now death becomes an impossible, impassable, limit with quite radical implications for knowledge and truth.

Whilst Forster’s A Passage To India is not so overtly concerned with death it is a novel much concerned with absence and the disruption of unity. The varying approaches taken by critics to the triad structure of A Passage To India is particularly interesting with the majority attempting to draw unity and coherence from Mosque, Caves and Temple. More recently the novel has been seen to challenge this drive for unity and coherence in its insistence on absence, in particular in the Marabar Caves sequence, regarded by many as the core of the novel, which offers itself up to deconstructive readings. In the nondescript darkness of one of the Marabar caves Mrs Moore experiences an unsettling epiphany in which she discovers nihilism and death and finds them ‘utterly dull’. This recalls Marlow’s approach to death, formless and incomprehensible. ‘Motionless with Horror’ Mrs Moore feels that ‘Pathos, piety, courage - they all exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value’ a response that could be restated in the words of Kurtz as simply, ‘The horror!’

Whilst Conrad and Forster are central to the canon of modernist literature and their works have been the site of much critical discussion, positions towards them are constantly shifting. Recent developments in critical theory have opened up new ways

of approaching literature, drawing increasingly upon the tools of philosophy and linguistics. Understanding the question of death demands the understanding of recent developments in critical theory and in the study of Conrad and Forster it becomes desirable to draw upon the work of Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot, and Emmanuel Levinas.

Whilst Jacques Derrida has been studied at length his contemporary Maurice Blanchot has until relatively recently been little discussed. A great many similarities can be seen in the work of Derrida and Blanchot, particularly in their discussions of language and of the Other. Whilst Blanchot’s work can be shown to have influenced Derrida’s thinking it is also clear that many of their works’ similarities derive from Emmanuel Levinas. All three of these philosophers consider the relationship of the subject with Death: Derrida in Aporias and The Gift of Death, Blanchot in The Infinite Conversation and Levinas in Time and The Other and Totality and Infinity. For Levinas death is the ‘absolutely unknowable’ that is the limit of the subject’s virility - this is the point from which both Derrida and Blanchot come to regard death as absolutely ‘other’, the relationship to death prefiguring the relationship to the self. The following quotation from Levinas illustrates the way in which the three philosophers place death in relation to the self and the other:

The object that I encounter is understood and, on the whole, constructed by me, even though death announces an event over which the subject is not master, an event in relation to which the subject is no longer a subject.

The question inferred in such a philosophy is that of the aporetical obligation to host the foreign and the alien and yet to respect him, her, or it as foreign. The way in which Derrida and Blanchot situate the subject within language makes the relation to the other as other extremely problematic and it at this point that orherness and death are linked.

My proposal is to consider the various manifestations of death in the novels of Conrad and Forster, reading from a perspective informed by the work of Derrida and Blanchot, in the light of Levinas. I want to argue that the question of the other is central to the question of death, re-reading these texts from this theoretical perspective will allow this relationship to become apparent.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this thing,

regards - Paul Wake.


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