In this Book
- Last Steps: Maurice Blanchot's Exilic Writing
- Book
- 2013
- Published by: Fordham University Press
summary
Writing, Maurice Blanchot taught us, is not something that is in one's power. It is, rather, a search for a non-power that refuses mastery, order, and all established authority. For Blanchot, this search was guided by an enigmatic exigency, an arresting rupture, and a promise of justice that required endless contestation of every usurping authority, an endless going out toward the other."The step/not beyond" ("le pas au-delà") names this exilic passage as it took form in his influential later work, but not as a theme or concept, since its "step" requires a transgression of discursive limits and any grasp afforded by the labor of the negative. Thus, to follow "the step/not beyond" is to follow a kind of event in writing, to enter a movement that is never quite captured in any defining or narrating account.Last Steps attempts a practice of reading that honors the exilic exigency even as it risks drawing Blanchot's reflective writings and fragmentary narratives into the articulation of a reading. It brings to the fore Blanchot's exceptional contributions to contemporary thought on the ethico-political relation, language, and the experience of human finitude. It offers the most sustained interpretation of The Step Not Beyond available, with attentive readings of a number of major texts, as well as chapters on Levinas and Blanchot's relation to Judaism. Its trajectory of reading limns the meaning of a question from The Infinite Conversation that implies an opening and a singular affirmation rather than a closure: "How had he come to will the interruption of the discourse?"
Table of Contents
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- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. 1-4
- Abbreviations
- pp. vii-viii
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-10
- Introduction
- pp. 1-14
- Part I. Sabbatical Acquiescence
- pp. 15-26
- Toward the Question of Peace
- pp. 17-33
- “The Indestructible”
- pp. 34-54
- Part II. Refusal/Affirmation
- pp. 55-66
- Part III. The Exilic Step
- pp. 123-134
- The Step Not Beyond
- pp. 125-223
- Through the Double Imperative
- pp. 225-234
Additional Information
ISBN
9780823251049
Related ISBN(s)
9780823251025
MARC Record
OCLC
859158923
Pages
320
Launched on MUSE
2013-10-21
Language
English
Open Access
No