File spoon-archives/blanchot.archive/blanchot_2000/blanchot.0003, message 11


Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 22:29:28 +0100
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-skidmore.edu>
Subject: Re: MB: Sv: =?iso-8859-1?Q?L=27ind=E9saississable?=


For a reference to a text where he introduces the term by way of a discussion of the notion of impossibility (to which
it is essentially related), look at Entretien Infini, p. 64f (sorry I don't have the English reference, but it is in the
essay "The Great Refusal," section 6, 'The Passion of the Outside').  There he explains that the 'insaisissable' is that
which is ungraspable because it is never present qua possibility over which we might have power.  And though it is, as
such, never present in the world of things and possibilities, it is nevertheless something 'present' to which we are
irremediably immediately related, and that we cannot put to the side or distance ourselves from (d'ou l'on ne peut
s'ecarter) -- it is "the immediate."  What we cannot escape is what one cannot 'dessaisir', hence the
'indesaississable.'  It seems to me that some of the confusion about these to etymoligically similar words, used in the
same context, can be clarified me thinking of what is grasping and what is being grasped.  In the former, we
'conceivers' cannot grasp the impossible (so to us is the insaissable).  On the other hand, the impossible immediate has
us in its grasp, so to speak, we this grasp can never be undone by us (hence is indesaississable).  The incessant, the
neutre, the outside -- other ways of talking about this.

Regard,
Reg

Oleg Koefoed wrote:
> 
> Dear Kim etc
> 
> I remember having written a note about this very word in my book - alas, I
> am away from it now, though I would enjoy having it around always (maybe
> disappearing into it sand, like Dan, would be a solution!) - but I shall
> try to find the time to find it tomorrow.
> 
> L'in-des-saisis-able ought to be: that which cannot be voluntarily let go
> of - but I don't remember the con-text (nice point, Dan). Saisir is to
> grasp. To des-saisir is to voluntarily
> un-grasp. So it should be - ah,sorry - that, which can not be voluntarily
> un-grasped. Previous to such a movement of un-grasping must be one of
> grasping, that lies in the des-; so it is something, which we, having
> grasped it, are grasped by, so that it will no longer let un-grasp it
> again. Yet, this unwillingness seems to indicate that somehting went
> otherwise with the grasping itself: is it the concept (be-griff) that has
> come to life as a griffen, as a grasping of the grasper?
> 
> Enough, I will have to read... (what pain!)
> 
> Kindly,
> 
> Oleg

   

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