Blanchot wrote a variety of genres such as novels, essays, and texts that feature a unique fragmentary philosophical style. He wrote extensively and profoundly on the philosophical thoughts of Hegel and Heidegger, yet he rarely explicitly quoted from their work. The main question that preoccupied Blanchot much of his life concerns the meaning of literature, writing, death, and ultimately the phenomenology of language and truth. It is said that usually he acted as if he were already dead and said that his books were posthumous.
Blanchot’s texts tend to be obscure and challenging for readers who have just discovered him. And it is not easy to interpret his writings in a straightforward manner. But that should not deter us from making an effort to try and sense what he means by the phenomenon of writing and language, and how words may turn into images just like artistic objects that lack semantic clarity and yet provide us with fundamental insights into the nature of the real, life, and the mystery of being and meaning. In Blanchot’s writing about writing, one is constantly brushing against the mysterious veils of the expressivity of existence that surrounds us and haunts us.
Selected Readings:
Blanchot, M. (1981). The Gaze of Orpheus. New York: Station Hill Press.
Blanchot, M. (1986). The Writing of Disaster. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Blanchot, M. (1988). The Unavowable Community. New York: Station Hill Press.
Blanchot, M. (1989). The Space of Literature. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Blanchot, M. (1993). The Infinite Conversation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.