Blanchot and Literary Criticism by Mark Hewson (review)

If this study is to be noted and remembered, it will perhaps because of the constraints it places on commonplace references to Blanchot’s literary criticism. To write not on “X’s Literary Criticism” but on “X and Literary Criticism” is to suggest a distance, a relationship that must be decided on rather than assumed. Accordingly, here, Blanchot’s writing is considered in relation not only to literary criticism, but also to literary theory, philosophy, and the subtle differences between these and other modes of thought. [End Page e-9]

In his exposition, Hewson lets fall many of the texts that might have been considered, from Faux Pas (1943) to Lautréamont and Sade (1949, 2nd ed. 1963) and The Book to Come (1959). Instead, he concentrates largely on The Work of Fire (1949) and The Space of Literature (1955). The discussion raises the possibility of Blanchot defending “a ‘metaphysics’ of poetry” (105), a quasi-theology or absolutism rising above historical contingency. On one level, this gives rise to the claim that The Space of Literature demonstrates a “hermetic ‘method’” (94); it also chimes with various attacks made on Blanchot from this angle (by Jean Laplanche for being an “idealist,” by Derrida for “essentialism”). This possibility of absolutism stems from the fact that Blanchot does not privilege any stable literary corpus, but instead investigates an always anterior Poem or Work, together with various writers’ attempts to respond to the demands it places on them. These issues are discussed in chapter 3, “Mallarmé and Modern Poetics.” Beyond this, chapter 5 is particularly helpful in unpacking this thinking of the Work, which recasts Heidegger’s thesis that only thought can allow being to find its true dwelling place. For Blanchot, this thought consists of both writing (what never begins) and reading (what never stops): any absolute status accorded to the Work thus takes on the characteristic of powerlessness, being severed from progressive historical time. The later collection of essays and texts, The Infinite Conversation (1969), is also mentioned on occasion. It seems to be crucial to Hewson’s larger argument that it belongs to a different era in Blanchot’s writing, one in which philosophy comes more directly to the fore. This might therefore lead us to identify The Work of Fire and The Space of Literature as less philosophical works. However, a valuable aspect of Hewson’s reading is his underlining of how these earlier works draw on philosophy as a subterranean influence or—in the literal sense—a motif. This philosophy can be seen at work in the fact that Blanchot’s writing on literature swiftly leaves the descriptive mode behind. It focuses instead on the movement or “event” (106) whereby writing comes into being, this movement taking the form of “the privation of world, self and time whose description occupies so much of Blanchot’s work” (89). In other words, the philosophy that informs and inflects his relation to literary criticism would be one that moves away from underlying essences and toward the différance of shifting inscription.

Beyond metaphysical absolutism and Heideggerian philosophy, a third yardstick for Blanchot’s enterprise is what Hewson names literary theory. In general terms, this term surely belongs at the less helpful end of a spectrum of terms that are unhelpful in varying degree (to a lesser degree, see also “post-structuralism” and “deconstruction”). Unfortunately, Hewson’s use of it does little to change this situation. Literary theory is variously [End Page e-10] defined as “representational inquiry” (116), as a discourse “oriented towards a methodological definition of the object that is to be studied” (102), and as defining “the literary by its linguistic properties or its cultural or institutional status” (140). That Blanchot does not engage in such enterprises seems convincing enough; bundling them together does little more than create a straw man.

A further notion that arises regarding discursive categorization sits uneasily with the others. It lies both outside the study’s purview, and creeps within it thanks to the several telling...