I know the resident expert isn't me, and I haven't even read 'The Step Outside' - but isn't the French title of that book a clue? It's 'Le Pas Au-Dela': 'the step outside' and 'the not-outside' at once...
And I'm DEFINITELY not the expert, but I had an inkling it is sort of less to do with space, and more to do with being 'off the scale of measurement'. When Blanchot talks about 'The One', he says (TWotD p140) "the great effect it has upon thought is its removal from all forms of dialectic and from every thought process." Space could be a helpful way of understanding the concept of 'outside' (space as a metaphor I mean)-but Blanchot says 'The One' is "[t]urned aside, rather...that which is...so high that there is no height at which it reveals itself", so it's not quite just a question of three-dimensions. The use of the word "remove" does however bring the idea of moving (and thus by extension, 'space') into play.
Is it helpful to tag the word "sublime" into a consideration of Blanchot's concept of the "outside", or is the word too pregnant with unwanted connotations?
Does anyone know what Blanchot thought about the body? Apart from being a source of need (hunger), I don't remember references to the embodiedness of existence. Are we just floating consciousnesses?
... nor am I the expert... God no! but I think that Blanchot's use of the term 'outside' is linked very strongly with Levinas' notion of the 'other'.
Whether this contributes to the discussion in a meaningful way or not, I'm not sure, but I know that Blanchot's experience in occupied France, causing him to lose his voice as a writer in a very obvious sense (in that he ceased writing as Blanchot and wrote anonymously) contributed to his forming his ideas of the 'i' being other than itself. I think this may have inspired his ideas about 'outsideness' (in that an element of 'i' is already displaced outside of the self, and it's always so, as the disaster has always already happened).
Part of me doesn't quite grasp that yet, though I can see the logic in it...
Perhaps this is obvious to everyone... it's rather late now and this is my last bit of activity on a computer for tonight!
helen asked: ‘Does anyone know what Blanchot thought about the body? Apart from being a source of need (hunger), I don't remember references to the embodiedness of existence. Are we just floating consciousnesses?’
i have problems seeing blanchot as a ‘body person’ (unlike, for example, artaud or cixous), although he did have some ideas about the self versus the other, I versus thou, object versus subject & spiritual versus material. can’t recall any specific sustained treatment about the body, except maybe some of his critical pieces – maybe the few essays about artaud, bataille, robert anthelme & simone weil, i think.
he did talk a bit about ghosts, though, about spectral & disembodied non-figures. many of the characters in his narratives often appear ghost-like.
4 comments:
I know the resident expert isn't me, and I haven't even read 'The Step Outside' - but isn't the French title of that book a clue? It's 'Le Pas Au-Dela': 'the step outside' and 'the not-outside' at once...
And I'm DEFINITELY not the expert, but I had an inkling it is sort of less to do with space, and more to do with being 'off the scale of measurement'. When Blanchot talks about 'The One', he says (TWotD p140) "the great effect it has upon thought is its removal from all forms of dialectic and from every thought process." Space could be a helpful way of understanding the concept of 'outside' (space as a metaphor I mean)-but Blanchot says 'The One' is "[t]urned aside, rather...that which is...so high that there is no height at which it reveals itself", so it's not quite just a question of three-dimensions. The use of the word "remove" does however bring the idea of moving (and thus by extension, 'space') into play.
Is it helpful to tag the word "sublime" into a consideration of Blanchot's concept of the "outside", or is the word too pregnant with unwanted connotations?
Does anyone know what Blanchot thought about the body? Apart from being a source of need (hunger), I don't remember references to the embodiedness of existence. Are we just floating consciousnesses?
... nor am I the expert... God no! but I think that Blanchot's use of the term 'outside' is linked very strongly with Levinas' notion of the 'other'.
Whether this contributes to the discussion in a meaningful way or not, I'm not sure, but I know that Blanchot's experience in occupied France, causing him to lose his voice as a writer in a very obvious sense (in that he ceased writing as Blanchot and wrote anonymously) contributed to his forming his ideas of the 'i' being other than itself. I think this may have inspired his ideas about 'outsideness' (in that an element of 'i' is already displaced outside of the self, and it's always so, as the disaster has always already happened).
Part of me doesn't quite grasp that yet, though I can see the logic in it...
Perhaps this is obvious to everyone... it's rather late now and this is my last bit of activity on a computer for tonight!
helen asked: ‘Does anyone know what Blanchot thought about the body? Apart from being a source of need (hunger), I don't remember references to the embodiedness of existence. Are we just floating consciousnesses?’
i have problems seeing blanchot as a ‘body person’ (unlike, for example, artaud or cixous), although he did have some ideas about the self versus the other, I versus thou, object versus subject & spiritual versus material. can’t recall any specific sustained treatment about the body, except maybe some of his critical pieces – maybe the few essays about artaud, bataille, robert anthelme & simone weil, i think.
he did talk a bit about ghosts, though, about spectral & disembodied non-figures. many of the characters in his narratives often appear ghost-like.
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