Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 18:22:27 -0700
From: Christophe Wall-Romana <kitocwr-AT-uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: MB: neuter & fragment


Hi Arne K--

1) The neuter can't be otherwise than being in-between, "entre: 
entre/ne(u)tre" writes Blanchot (Le pas au-dela, 97).
Only difference is the odd floating U in parenthesis, as "eu" or 'had' 
in French, "you" in English, then as in entre-tien where 'tien' has the 
true false etymology of "yours" within the anagrammatic 'entre' which 
means all of: in-between, among, enter and come.
The neuter cannot properly "be", or have any ontological status (being 
or non-being). It can only write itself or utter itself, so that it may 
reveal something of what is the counterpart of 'existing' for 
literature, if not for what it is never exactly time yet it is always 
more proper to call $cripture ($ as neuter form of 'neither S nor 
s'...).
On the same page Blanchot writes: "The neuter's enigma, an enigma the 
neuter appeases all the while making it shimmer within a name."
Thinking of the neuter as the enigma U HAD in mind while asking what the 
word means may be as close as you'll actually get it to shimmer for you.

Otherwise, Leslie Hill contextualizes the neuter in _Blanchot: Extreme 
Contemporary_, Chap. 3, "Writing the Neuter." It is also very useful to 
see what can be made of or with the neuter, such as in _Mark C. Taylor's 
Altarity_ 232-6. According to Joseph Libertson's monumental (and the 
more I wade through it) indispensabe _Proximity: Levinas, Blanchot, 
Bataille and Communication_ the emergence of the neuter in Blanchot in 
the mid-60's corresponds to the latter's difficulties in grasping the 
sense of the asymmetry or non-reciprocity in Levinas' work (in TeI), 
esp. in _L'entretien infini_ where it is conceptualized by Blanchot as a 
neuter qua double dissymmetry. Hill's comments (pp. 176-7) while counter 
to Libertson's show if nothing else that this is a critical juncture in 
the Levinas-Blanchot entretien and deserves to be reflected on.

2) Fragment
Is there a difference between the Romantics' (F. Schlegel, but also 
Holderlin, Keats and later Emerson, Kierkegaard or even Nietzsche) and 
Blanchot's writing the fragment? Perhaps none, at least from the point 
of view of Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy who, right before giving the 
translation of the Critical and Atheneum fragments of the Schlegels, 
seamlessly conclude their chapter "Le fragment" with Blanchot's 
"desoeuvrement" as their implicit reconceptualization (_L'absolu 
Litteraire_ 80, 421)... But then history must dissent or intervene, 
perhaps precisely as explicit neuter, to render the views of 1798 on the 
fragment wholly unassimilable to Blanchot's, this side of the Shoah--and 
this certainly seems to be part of Lacoue-Labarth's and Nancy's 
political motive to disclose and think communicative hauntings in 
writing...
I hope this resonates!
Christophe WR