Sylvester, Blanchot’s Extreme Negation

Maurice Blanchot has been a dominant presence in French literary circles for almost all of this century. As will become apparent throughout this essay, Blanchot’s ideas about the literary, particularly about the moments when literature and philosophy overlap, are crucial reference points for later French thinkers, noticeably Jacques Derrida, Jean Luc-Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. His insights into literature are often of a philosophical nature, his method, if we can call it that, is one of following a specific work in great detail highlighting the moments of unsustainability within it. Once the literary problem is illuminated Blanchot in a subtle way suggests the possibility of these literary inconsistencies in the singular to be the problem of literature generally. Literature, for Blanchot, is nothing but ambiguity, a state which arises through the inherent ambiguity of language. Because of this, language, in Blanchot’s opinion, is absolute power, but this absoluteness renders language as that which is most powerless. In this paper I should like to examine the way language is constructed in Blanchot’s writings, to ascertain whether it is possible to consider the power of literary language in isolation from literature. That is, I want to gauge how language is constituted outside the literary realm, when, as Blanchot argues, a division between literary and non-literary language is not sustainable. The question is how can literature be prized as a disruptive force, as a refutation of power, if this is constituted solely because of the dualistic nature of language. Surely if the disruptive force rests only with this ambiguity within language then other disciplines should also be affected by it.

In the early years of Blanchot’s writing career a theory of literature is sketched out over a number of essays, noticeably in “How is Literature Possible?”(1942), “From Dread to Language”(1943) and “Literature and the Right to Death”(1949). Importantly, in each of these essays the creation of a theory of literature or of a poetics hinges upon negation, specifically with relation to the construction of a theory of language. Here, we will analyse “How is Literature Possible?” which brings forth a number of dominant concerns, after which I intend to examine what is arguably Blanchot’s most seminal essay, “Literature and the Right to Death”, of which there have been a number of clarifying readings in the past years, particularly in English. These, no doubt confirm the importance of this essay to Blanchot’s oeuvre at large. It is the three essays in tandem which outline most succinctly what I am calling Blanchot’s theory of literature, although it needs to be recognised that Blanchot himself does not set out a systematic theory of literature, yet, this should not suggest that Blanchot does not have a particular thesis, nor that a theory of literature cannot be construed externally. Blanchot’s theory of literature is organised by negativity, but we need to make clear that Blanchot’s conception of literature rests upon more than negativity in an Hegelian sense. This ‘something more’ goes by a number of names, and we shall discuss these in due course. But before doing so, it is vital that we understand both the degree to which Blanchot advocates a model of negation, and what is meant by negation. Although there is a non-Hegelian negativity to Blanchot’s theory of literature, an aspect which has produced much commentary, Blanchot’s is a theory which hinges upon at least two understandings of negativity. These different ways of conceptualising negativity need to be acknowledged if the depth of Blanchot’s insights into language and literature are to be appreciated.

Before launching into this exploration of negativity within Blanchot’s writings, it will prove fruitful to situate Blanchot first into an historical framework. At the commencement of his writing career during the 1930s and 1940s, Sartre dominated the French intellectual sphere. There can be little doubt that he was a formidable presence; a thinker whose ideas were both well known and revered. Although they shared a common intellectual background, Blanchot found Sartre’s union of literature with politics via his philosophical position highly problematic. Despite their historicity, the divide between these two major French thinkers is inestimable, and Blanchot critiqued the Sartrean position a number of times particularly at the outset of his writing career. Not only did the two share a philosophical and literary background, in the sense of writing reviews and criticism, but also in the sense that both were emerging novelists, although, already at this stage, Sartre had quite a literary reputation. Blanchot, although merely a budding novelist and reviewer at the time, had a definite conception of what the place and function of literature was to be when reviewing Sartre. Using the space of the review, his ideas about literature were formulated and the originality of these ideas culminated in the spate of essays which were to undergird his later reputation. In opposition to Sartre, Blanchot could not abide the concept of ‘engaged literature’. The idea of a program which literature could propagate was not merely abhorrent to Blanchot but also an impossibility, for in Blanchot’s estimation, literature’s inherent ambiguity disrupts all attempts for appropriation. In this way they differ decisively in their conception of the relationship between the writer, literature and politics. For Blanchot, as Michael Holland points out, literature cannot be engaged as “literature, its language and the ‘world’ it offers its subject exist... in place of a world that has gone to ruin.” [2] Advocating an understanding of literature which radically departs from Sartre’s, challenged not only existentialism when it was held at its peak, but also undermined and problematised the ways literature was conceived of under the domination of Sartre.

We can estimate the distance between Sartre and Blanchot by turning to “How is Literature Possible?” If we remember that it was written in 1942 the title of the essay alone should inform us of at least a couple of the concerns contained within it. Placed in its historical context, Blanchot’s essay could not be referring to anything other than Sartre’s “What is Literature?” A direct and pointed barb against Sartre is clearly made when Blanchot stipulates that this question ‘what is literature?’ has only produced meaningless answers. The divide between their approaches to literature can be monitored simply by thinking about their different modes of questioning. The manner in which Sartre poses the question reveals his assumption that literature is a thing which can be defined, whereas Blanchot’s manner of questioning destabilises the normally held assumptions about literature. During the 1940s Blanchot was a reviewer for a number of different journals, and this essay, although voicing criticism toward Sartre, was his response to Jean Paulhan’s Les Fleurs de Tarbes, ou la Terreur dans les Lettres , (1941). [3] Michael Syrotinski has recently suggested that Paulhan’s text was decisive for the development of Blanchot’s critical apparatus, although not concurring fully with Syrotinski’s position here, it is fair to say that the nature and topic of Paulhan’s text provided a congenial platform from which Blanchot could launch his theoretical musings. Before exploring the review I want to give the game away by telling the answer of the title’s question: ‘Literature is possible by its impossibility’ and this is the crux of Blanchot’s thesis. Every essay he writes after this will attempt to elucidate this paradoxical situation, and not surprisingly the list of writers who exemplify this are Kafka, Mallarmé, Lautréamont, Rilke and Hölderlin. The question which remains is how is one to understand this peculiar answer? Rather than faithfully following the sequence of Blanchot’s review, I propose that we can glean far more interesting observations concerning Blanchot’s thesis, if we read the review in a non-linear manner.

Blanchot’s initial question, ‘how is literature possible?’ is posed because in Paulhan’s schema, literature is almost torn apart by two rival tendencies, which results in literature’s existence being uncertain. For Paulhan, literature adheres to one of two camps, Terror or Rhetoric and the aims of these two camps nearly annul the possibility of literature existing. This tension entails that literature is pulled in two directions simultaneously, drawn in by the vector of Terrorism, yet equally seduced by the vector of rhetoric. Blanchot celebrates this uneasy tension rising from the incompatible tendencies within literature, rejoicing in the precariousness of literature’s position. As he writes elsewhere, “If language, and written language in particular, did not constantly and anticipatedly tend toward its annihilation it would not be possible, for this tendency toward its impossibility is the condition on which it is based.” [3] In Paulhan’s book Blanchot recognises the paradox inherent in all literature, from which he argues that literature has as a structural trait not only conditions of possibility but also conditions of impossibility. In this way we can begin to trace the aporetic pattern which becomes almost signatory of Blanchot’s writing style.

These initial thoughts are explored in greater depth in “Literature and the Right to Death” seven years later. This is a long, complex essay which ties together a number of different concerns. [4] Initially it was published in two parts over 1947 and 1948 in Critique, a journal in which Blanchot often contributed reviews. These essays were joined to become the closing essay in Blanchot’s first critical publication La Part du feu (1949). We can estimate at least one of the primary concerns of “Literature and the Right to Death” by contemplating the title of the first part, “Le Règne animal de l’ésprit”, published in the winter of 1947 whose title immediately evokes the section within Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit , “The Spiritual Animal Kingdom and Deceit, or the ‘Matter in Hand Itself’. [4] As is often the case with Blanchot, the concern is not simply or solely with Hegel: the reading of Hegel given here by Blanchot is a reading which takes into account and concerns itself not only with Hegel’s writings but also with the interpretations of Hegel given by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite. [5] Here, we can gauge the type of analysis Blanchot makes of Hegel and other philosophers. Although he is far more rigorous than many other ‘literary critics’ Blanchot takes up and deliberates upon certain ideas within philosophical systems but not an entire work.

Blanchot’s understanding of literature is underwritten by ‘negativity’, and this negativity is central to understanding the way language is construed by Blanchot. One of the clearest ways to show the importance of negativity to Blanchot is by turning directly to the source which made negativity a dominating presence in France during the 1930s, namely Alexandre Kojève. Kojève’s lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit , where exceedingly influential for a whole generation of French thinkers, and there can be little doubt that Blanchot was not influenced profoundly by them even though it is unlikely that he attended any of these lectures. Like many French intellectuals at the time his understanding of Hegel is tempered by Kojève. During the lectures, given from 1933 to 1939 at the École Pratique des hautes Études, Kojève presented the Hegelian dialectic in a specific way which emphasised the master/slave aspect of it. One cannot underestimate the importance of Kojève’s reading of Hegel, nor should one dismiss the influence of Jean Hyppolite’s Genèse et structure de la Phénoménologie de l’esprit de Hegel (1946) for Blanchot’s understanding of Hegel is synthesised to some degree by both writers. The issue of Critique in which Blanchot’s “Le Règne animal de l’ésprit” appears also contains a double review by Henri Niet of Kojève and Hyppolite’s recently published studies of Hegel. This should not suggest that Blanchot was in complete agreement with the ideas proposed by Kojève, Hyppolite or even Hegel himself. Blanchot’s most interesting insights on literature occur in his refusal to adhere dogmatically to Hegelian negativity, when he puts forward a conception of literature which relies upon both negativity understood via Hegel and a negativity which cannot be reduced to conceptual thought which he calls le neutre .

The Hegelian influence in “Literature and the Right to Death” is easy to adduce not merely by the original title of the first section, but also because Blanchot cites Hegel at significant points throughout the essay, however the importance of Hegel’s influence to Blanchot’s construction of a theory of literature becomes more visible when we understand the central problem he had with the Hegelian dialectic proper. To clarify what this dissatisfaction was we can refer to Bataille who shared similar concerns as Blanchot. Bataille was a regular attender of Kojève’s famous lectures and his issue with the Hegelian dialectic can be witnessed in the letter he wrote to Kojève in 1937. [5] Here, Bataille questions Hegel’s system by posing the problem of inactivity; what happens to negativity if there is nothing more to do? For Bataille, the only possible solution to the quandary that his question produces is the idea of ‘unemployable negativity’. Bataille gives weight to the possibility of ‘unemployable negativity’ by referring to himself in this manner, viewing himself as an embodiment of the negativity which does not exhaust itself in action. This unemployed and unemployable negativity later became theorised by Bataille in terms of excess; surplus escaping from and exceeding the dialectic of negativity. For him, this excess negativity lies in conditions such as death, sex, laughter and play, which transgress the parameters of the Hegelian dialectic, and hence, reveal its limits. Blanchot differs somewhat from Bataille, but it would be fair to say that for Blanchot, this excess is analogous to anomalies which are apparent in death and literature.

As there are a number of aspects within Blanchot’s enterprise which have the potential to cause confusion, it will be pertinent to make some basic observations and explanations now, as these possible points of confusion or contention can be allayed easily if we ground out a few fundamental points. In “Literature and the Right to Death” we witness the germination of Blanchot’s theory of language and of literature. Although highly original, Blanchot’s theory of literature must be considered as a strange hybrid, one in which elements of other philosophers and writers resonate. In this manner, although we are given a depiction of say the Hegelian dialectic of negativity, we are not given a comprehensive or sustained reading of it. Instead, Blanchot grafts elements of the Hegelian dialectic with the poetics of a writer such as Mallarmé, and in so doing creates a new poetics, one in which often considered antagonistic writers and thinkers come together. With that said, we should not expect to find within Blanchot’s writings an adherence to any particular linguistic or philosophic framework. His theory of language is not one which could be located in linguistic handbooks, nor does it sit easily with language models as constructed by those philosophers engaged in the study of language. While Blanchot’s writings may from time to time engage with a particular linguistic, philosophical, ethical or political problem, he does not pursue either linguistics, philosophy, ethics or politics consistently. Keeping this in mind will aid us when we attempt to circumscribe the areas in which models of language with the literary in mind are considered from non-literary perspectives, and will help us refrain from making tenuous links or unjustifiable claims. Blanchot’s concern is with language, particularly language as it relates to literature, and although I wish to construe how language operates for Blanchot outside the literary domain, it is near impossible to maintain this distinction between the literary and the non-literary. Before speculating about this any further far better at this stage to outline how Blanchot actually construes language.

“Literature and the Right to Death” is by no means a simple or easy piece of writing, and one wonders what the first readers must of thought of it during the winter of 1947-48. In contradistinction to James Swenson, who suggests that there is no visible soldering line in the essay when it appears as a whole, I would argue that the slight shift in subject matter along with the dramatic change in tone clearly stand out. [6] The significance of this demarcation line will rise again shortly, when I analyse the second part of the essay. Although there are thematic links between the two parts, a division which is only made while in article form, the essay reads as if a topic is being pursued from two distinct vantage points, that topic is literature specifically and art generally. Although an enigmatic and intricate bondage between language and literature takes center stage in the second half of the essay, a strange and troubling relationship is suggested to exist between language and literature from the outset. Before examining this peculiar way that Blanchot circumscribes language, it is necessary to examine the first part, as it is there that the question of negativity is first addressed.

For Blanchot, literature begins when it becomes a question. This question is addressed to language but paradoxically it is a question addressed to language which has already become literature. Immediately, then, we are bound within a circularity; literature can only be such a thing when it is a question of itself via language which is already literature. This paradox within literature is further complicated when a consideration of the double-bind Hegel attributes to writing is made. Together, these paradoxes highlight the impossibility of literature actually coming into existence. Here, the reference is to the double bind of writing itself; one cannot be a writer until one writes but one never knows until one has already written whether one can actually write or not. Although writing occurs, obviously, the paradox itself never seems to be overcome. Another reference to Hegel is made shortly afterwards. Here, further pursuing literature’s possibility, Blanchot deliberates upon the idea of a literary work comparing it with work as constructed in a Hegelian model. As we know for Hegel, work is a process of negation. Blanchot questions why the literary work is considered suspect when it fully conforms to the negation that is required in work. In Blanchot’s meditation a literary text negates everything, and from one perspective should be considered as the exemplum of work’s negation. However, he quickly demonstrates the other side of this argument agreeing that the work of art is suspect, but for reasons that Hegel does not give. Blanchot demonstrates the complete inability of the literary work to conform fully with the notion of work as constituted by Hegel, for literature as work partakes too well in destruction and transformation; it negates everything including the limit of negation itself and in this way shows the failure of negation. In this way, we are moved from believing that the literary work is the exemplum of work to the realisation that there is something suspect about the literary work, it does not fully conform to the destructive, transformative act of negation that work is. As Blanchot writes, “The truth is that he [the writer] ruins action, not because he deals with what is unreal but because he makes all of reality available to us.” (316:307) This inability on behalf of the literary work to conform to negation ascribes literature, and perhaps art generally, as privileged but renders them powerless. Not adhering to the dialectic process, art is placed in a questionable position.

Blanchot pursues this line of argument moving from a discussion of action toward one of freedom, particularly the notion of freedom understood within the context of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. It is in this context that Blanchot raises the problem of death. Now, death in Blanchot’s oeuvre is a fundamental concern; it becomes the slogan of revolution, in which the right to death is freedom. There are many twists and turns to Blanchot’s argument here, until we come to the point that being, even if this is being which implies ‘the right to death’, is “revealed as absolute.”(320:310 ) For Blanchot, Sade is the writer par excellence precisely because he adheres to a belief of All or Nothing, and this is the position literature takes, it manifests itself as absolute. At this moment Blanchot articulates the often seemingly paradox that there is a difference between death and dying, a judgement in which death is rendered possible while dying is impossible. According to Blanchot, the insignificance of death and dying becomes apparent in revolution but not in war. We shall leave this concern with death and dying to the side in order to pursue Blanchot’s peculiar remark which follows his contemplation of these themes, “Literature contemplates itself in revolution.” (321:311) This remark forms a significant moment within the essay as immediately after it Blanchot considers the question of language. In fact, Blanchot must consider language here because in discussing revolution and literature’s contemplation of itself within revolution immediately reverberates back to his initial supposition that literature only becomes such when it becomes a self-addressed question of itself as language; a contemplation of itself. As it forms a significant moment within the essay, I shall cite the passage at length:

At this stage, Blanchot states two rather simple sentences, “Literature is bound to language.” and “Language is reassuring and disquieting at the same time.” [7] This is the sentence which solders the two parts of the essay together, and where the formal break was located when the essays were published as articles in Critique. Language becomes the new vantage point from which to circumscribe the parameters of literature. Thematically, death - the trope of negativity - continues to be a guiding thread, one which aids Blanchot to construe the parameters of literature. But let us think about these simple sentences, for often they are the ones which give us the best insights. I want to pursue the second sentence before speculating about the first as the problem invoked by literature’s bind to language will be a reference point I will be continually circling around. I think we all recognise, on one level, the reasons for why language both reassures us and disturbs us. But the manner in which Blanchot depicts language’s double nature heightens the disturbing aspect rather than emphasising the reassuring side of language. He immediately situates language within the domain of power relations - it is through language we have control over things. This notion of control is in itself slightly double-edged as to be able to control things is reassuring only when we ourselves have control. But obviously, sometimes we do not and this is disquieting, yet for Blanchot the disquieting aspect of language is more complicated and disturbing than this because what the disquieting aspect of language reveals to us is not so much our lack of sophistication or mastery over words but rather that this possibility is implicit within language. When we speak or write language exceeds us. It carries within itself the possibility of always exceeding what we want it to designate. In this way, naturally, we cannot always feel reassured about language because it itself has an uncontainable aspect to it. Blanchot offers here a foretaste of what will be a major concern for Derrida.

Command or power is a consequence of our ability to name things. For the moment I do not wish to address the social and political implications which are brought about in the passage through the employment of ‘woman’ as example. For the moment, let it suffice to say that in Blanchot’s writings, the figure of ‘woman’ is always entwined with death, always implicated in strange power relations, yet it would be unfair to suggest immediately that the status of ‘woman’ is compromised. The status of woman is a complicated matter in Blanchot and one I shall not attempt to address here. What needs to be addressed is the power attributed to language. Two rather obvious but important interrelated things need to be stated: language contains this power and bears within it this annihilating quality, yet language cannot speak unaided, it is man who employs language which is instilled with this power. Blanchot accords a great deal of power to language, investing it with a power which is brought about in the act of naming. Whereas in the earlier section of the essay, literature is aligned with the social/political with respect to revolution, here the social and political implications are more specific as they hone onto ‘woman’. From this we can gauge that language is not removed from the social realm, and it is particularly valuable to realise that language and all the power contained within it is not merely bound up with a literary concern in writers such as Blanchot but is also bound up with the social. Blanchot’s theory of language and literature impinges upon social and political realms.

We need to move slowly here in order to unpack these remarkable sentences. Surely this is a little extreme: we can all speak, all name things, all utilise language, and yet death or annihilation has not taken place thankfully. In what way then, does Blanchot imagine this extremity of power with relation to language? To answer this we need to refer again to Hegel. In pronouncing the name of an object we destroy it, that is, we annihilate it the real object by turning it into the concept of the object. The act of naming is an act of the negative for Hegel, “The first act, by which Adam established his lordship over the animals, is this, that he gave them a name, i.e., he nullified them as beings on their own account, and made them into ideal [entities].” [7] It may help things a little if we allow Blanchot to explicate this in a little more depth:

If language is ‘that ideal negation’ why does Blanchot harbour dissatisfaction with the Hegelian dialectic? Blanchot seeks to retain the double gesture of negation and preservation in the Hegelian Aufhebung. However, he also detects the limitations within it, which pivots upon the negativity which exceeds negation. In order to understand the consequence of this for literature, we must turn to the well known Hegelian phrase which Blanchot skewers slightly, ‘life endures death and maintains itself in it’. Blanchot insists that there are two possible ways of reading Hegel’s thesis, for Blanchot these two ways of reading are not irreducible, and following this line of thought, he argues that literature is an aporetic relation, comprised always of possibility and impossibility. Following a Hegelian schema, Blanchot, fleshes out the dual tendencies within modern literature, which put bluntly, can be considered as an affair of the concept and an affair with language. These are the precise rival tendencies which he had detected when discussing Paulhan. The first tendency, the preoccupation with the concept is linked with annihilation, for to name something is to take away its uniqueness transforming it into an idea. Literature, when bowing to this tendency, partakes of death as a dialectical power. But as Blanchot demonstrates this has a rival tendency, one in which the interest is not so much with the idea, but with language and its materiality. This tendency does not engage with dialectics, nor with power. It is literature as the refutation of power. Interlocked these two tendencies force literature into an impossible relation.

Another way we can pursue this annihilating power of language is to consider how Blanchot writes about language generally. As I mentioned earlier, Blanchot’s interest in language is not that of a linguist, nor as a philosopher, rather in his discussions of language he appears as a peculiar amalgamation, where an enquiring mind melds with the concerns of a wordsmith. Language contains within itself a fundamental ambiguity which is caused in part by its dualistic nature. Blanchot’s conception of language is informed by a number of literary figures, particularly Stéphane Mallarmé and Jean Paulhan. It will be instructive here to compare very briefly Blanchot’s account of language with Mallarmé’s. Discussing the materiality of language, Blanchot makes a passing reference to Mallarmé when he employs the loaded example of woman. The passage Blanchot alludes to is very well known: “I say: a flower! and outside the forgetfulness to which my voice relegates any contour, as something other than familiar chalices, musically there arises, the idea itself and suave, the absent one from all bouquets.” [8] The step between Mallarmé’s ‘I say a flower’ to Blanchot’s ‘To name woman’ is great as with it we have moved from a supposedly purely literary context to a political one.

Blanchot follows the dialectical move up to a point and then refuses to follow, for he argues that the word does more than just denote its concept, there is a negative charge leftover and this excess is the very materiality of the word. The word does not just denote a concept but presents itself as something material, it has a shape and a sound, it has a materiality which necessitates that it is seen to be more than just a concept. We can understand then why Blanchot moves towards poetry as the exemplum of the excess which escapes negativity. Poetry is the place where the materiality of the word is allowed full expression. Literature is a mode which suspends the dialectic, it does not wreck the dialectic but rather leaves it idling unable to complete itself. This is literature’s force and power, a power which is disruptive but is itself without power, it cannot do anything.

But this is the burden of literature, this is literature’s dealing with language. But what can we make of this outside of the literary domain? What are the implications of such a model of language, and how can we conceive of literature as this disruptive force which does not disrupt anything? Although Leslie Hill argues that for Blanchot, “art, to the extent that it is what founds all community, is what founds the political too”, I am suspicious of such a line of argument, as it simplifies Blanchot’s complicated stance toward the political, and does not take into account Blanchot’s shifting position with regard to the relation between literature and politics. [9] As yet, there has not been any adequate undertaking of a study which examines this relationship in Blanchot’s writings, although I would surmise that Denis Hollier is leading the way for such an investigation. An account of how literature overlaps with the non-literary, especially within Blanchot’s later writings is an issue which must be accounted for, unfortunately this cannot be achieved adequately here as it necessitates a thorough analysis of Blanchot’s later writings and here we have been restricted to detailing Blanchot’s initial and founding arguments regarding language. Hill is correct, to the degree that, it is through Blanchot’s thesis on community, that the relations between langauge, literature, and the non-literary must be conceived. Although the analysis will be brief I want to quickly turn to one piece of writing through which we can begin to estimate what this relation is for Blanchot. In 1961 Blanchot published a short but remarkable article, “The Name Berlin”, in which he argues that the division of Berlin was not only a political division, which had a concrete expression but also a metaphysical division in which the division was concretised abstractly. This abstraction, according to Blanchot, “is not simply an incorrect way of thinking, or a manifestly impoverished form of language: abstraction is our world, the world in which, day after day, we live and think.” [10] Importantly, Blanchot argues that it is “truth of literature” which made this situation conceivable for non-Germans, although the task was impossible. Literature which partakes in impossiblity, allows the writer to convey the “abstractly concretising division” that was Berlin. In reflecting upon this relation between language, writing and the social, I shall give Blanchot the last word,

Blanchot’s Extreme Negation: Language and Power in Contemporary Critical Theory