{"id":825,"date":"2016-10-17T17:25:01","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T21:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/?p=825"},"modified":"2016-10-17T17:42:05","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T21:42:05","slug":"bernard-e-harcourt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/bernard-e-harcourt\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt: On Writing, Fragments, and Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"monoblue\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Bernard E. Harcourt <\/strong><\/p>\n

Nietzsche was, in \u00c9tienne Balibar<\/a>\u2019s words, Maurice Blanchot\u2019s \u201cdouble.\u201d Blanchot (1907-2003) engaged Nietzsche early\u2014shortly after World War II\u2014and throughout the rest of his writings.[1]<\/a> In La Part du feu <\/em>published by Gallimard in 1949, Blanchot motivates his multiple essays through the lens of his final chapter, \u201cDu C\u00f4t\u00e9 de Nietzsche<\/em>,\u201d where he dives into the abyss of godlessness. Nietzsche appears, alongside Feuerbach and Auguste Comte, among those who \u201cinitiated or organized that world without God.\u201d (PF<\/em>, 279) In his opus, L\u2019Entretien infini,<\/em> published by Gallimard in 1969, Blanchot starts and ends his infinite conversation with Nietzsche, lacing the concept of the eternal return throughout his meditations. From the very first page of epigraphs, through the lengthy engagement in the \u201cLimit Experience,\u201d in chapters on \u201cNietzsche, today\u201d and \u201cNietzsche and fragmentary writing,\u201d to the end, Blanchot is dialoguing first and foremost with Nietzsche, carefully setting forth the multiple possible readings and engagements on the eternal return (EI<\/em>, 407-408). Four years later, in Le Pas au-del\u00e0<\/em>, published by Gallimard in 1973, Blanchot would return again and again to Nietzsche\u2019s notion of the eternal return, the organizing theme of that important work on (there is a double meaning here) \u201cthe step beyond\/outside\u201d or \u201cthe not beyond\/outside\u201d (LPA<\/em>, 21, 26, 58, 61, passim<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"blanchot_maurice_du-cote-de-nietzsche-manuscrit-autographe_1946_edition-originale_3_48342\"<\/a>Naturally, Blanchot\u2019s engagement with Nietzsche would be mediated through his relation to others, including importantly Sade, Kafka, Rilke, and Hegel, as Balibar notes, but also Mallarm\u00e9, H\u00f6lderlin, Baudelaire, and Ren\u00e9 Char, as Annelies Shulte Nordholt<\/a> reminds us. Yet somehow, it seems, Nietzsche takes pride of place. Like Bataille, Blanchot had been a devout Catholic and Nietzsche\u2019s writings on the death of God were formative interventions, life changing, seismic work. Like Bataille, Nietzsche would have a transformative and life-lasting effect on Blanchot. And through Nietzsche\u2019s aphoristic or fragmentary style,[2]<\/a> Blanchot\u2019s influence on us would run through the medium of his writing<\/em>\u2014not just the dimension of fragmentary writing and its relation to aphorisms, but the importance of writing per se<\/em> as a transformative act and exigency. What Blanchot pushed us to interrogate and explore, through his \u201cNietzsche double,\u201d is the radical potential of writing itself.<\/p>\n

~~<\/p>\n

Both \u00c9tienne Balibar and Annelies Shulte Nordholdt, in their presentations, emphasized the radical potential of writing on philosophy<\/em> and for philosophy<\/em>\u2014starting from the transformative effect of Nietzsche\u2019s aphoristic anti-dialectical style and adding to that Blanchot\u2019s fragmentary writing form. \u201cBlanchot\u2019s most original move,\u201d Nordholdt tells us, \u201cis probably the idea that writing is a refusal or contestation\u2014we could also say a deconstruction\u2014of the power of metaphysics<\/em>.\u201d Balibar adds, drawing our attention to an exquisite passage about Sade and systematic thought in L\u2019Entretien infini<\/em> at p. 228-229, that while Nietzsche\u2019s aphoristic style may still have remained closer to traditional philosophy, Blanchot\u2019s turn to fragmentary writing allowed him to \u201cexceed philosophy:\u201d not to overcome philosophy, but to \u201cmake philosophy excessive\u201d \u201cby virtue of the writing.\u201d Writing, Balibar suggests, has \u201cthis destructive dimension\u201d on philosophy.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

But what of its political potential? What of the capacity of writing to radical transform politics and relations of power? And not merely the concreteness of partisan or electoral politics, but political relations writ large?<\/p>\n

There are times in Blanchot\u2019s writing that, it seems, he almost retreats from this political potentiality and, in his later life, from the world of politics. In 1969, for instance, when Blanchot (most likely) writes the introductory note to his Infinite Conversation<\/em>, one has a sense that Blanchot has already retreated from the political. Writing now turns back on itself, it looks inward\u2014it becomes writing for writing\u2019s sake, no longer in the service of, say, political transformation. \u201c\u00c9crire, l\u2019exigence d\u2019\u00e9crire,\u201d Maurice Blanchot emphasized. \u201cWriting, the exigency of writing: not just the writing that has always placed itself at the service of speech or idealist thought, but rather writing that, by its own strength slowly liberated, seems to dedicate itself only to itself.\u201d (L\u2019Entretien infini<\/em>, vii). \u201cOnly to itself\u201d: how does writing that dedicates itself \u201conly to itself\u201d achieve its radical political potential? Or does it? What does the inward movement make possible?<\/p>\n

In this epilogue, I would like to suggest some possible answers to this question, which I think is perhaps the most important challenge to what may appear as an ethereal discourse on \u201cwriting.\u201d First, in the immediate next paragraph of his note\u2014which again, I can only assume would have been written closest to the time of publication, whereas much of the infinite conversation dated back years\u2014Blanchot suggests that \u201cWriting in this way presupposes a radical change of epochs\u2014death even, the interruption\u2014or, to speak hyperbolically, \u201cthe end of history,\u201d and, in that sense, it passes through the coming of communism, recognized as the ultimate affirmation, communism always being still beyond communism.\u201d (EI<\/em>, vii-viii). This is not, of course, a reference to the French Communist party, which well before 1969 had been disavowed by most public intellectuals for its Stalinist tendencies. Of course, Blanchot is not referring here to existing communist parties or regimes. He is referring to a beyond that is still unknown, and to a notion of community. But it is simply astounding that he would use the word \u201ccommunism\u201d three times in one sentence in the final paragraph of his note. Particularly given the timing of his writing\u2014right after the student uprisings of May \u201968 which so affected Blanchot.[4]<\/a> The timing gives these words a particular resonance. Even more, coming from a man who began his career before the war as the editor of a right-wing newspaper, Journal des d\u00e9bats<\/em>, and wrote as well for the extreme right monthly magazine Combat<\/em>. One can only infer from these passages in L\u2019Entretien infini<\/em> that the radicality of writing goes beyond philosophy to politics. But what is that political dimension? And how does this exigency of writing, that somehow goes beyond \u201cthe service of speech or idealist thought,\u201d relate to the need to specify political argument or juridical analysis?<\/p>\n

Second, then, the answer must connect to Blanchot\u2019s attraction to the \u201coutside.\u201d As Annelies Shulte Nordholt reminds us, the exigency of writing leads Blanchot to a form of writing \u201cthat we could say is outside discourse, outside language.\u201d (EI<\/em>, vii). In a similar vein, Foucault wrote of Blanchot in terms of \u201cThe Thought from Outside<\/em>\u201d\u2014and it is this notion of going outside, beyond, to the limit, that Foucault found most promising in Blanchot\u2019s work. Foucault writes, of Blanchot, \u201cAttraction is no doubt for Blanchot what desire is for Sade, force for Nietzsche, the materiality of thought for Artaud, and transgression for Bataille: the pure, most naked, experience of the outside.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

Foucault placed Blanchot at the end of a long line of thinkers who are formative to him in thinking from the outside\u2014Nietzsche, Mallarm\u00e9, Artaud, Bataille, Klossowski, and Blanchot\u2014all of whom reflected on the present by reaching beyond or exploring the limit. All of whom deployed language to reveal, in Foucault\u2019s words, \u201cthe sparkle of the outside.\u201d (MB<\/em>, p. 18). Foucault would tell us that \u201cBlanchot is perhaps more than just another witness to this thought. So far has he withdrawn into the manifestation of his work, so completely is he, not hidden by his texts, but absent from their existence and absent by virtue of the marvelous force of their existence, that for us he is that thought itself\u2014its real, absolutely distant, shimmering, invisible presence, its inevitable law, its calm, infinite, measured strength.\u201d (MB<\/em>, p. 19)<\/p>\n

As for what this \u201coutside\u201d might consist of, Blanchot at times gives us an indication. Blanchot’s discussion of the eternal return, for instance, is telling (esp. EI<\/em>, p. 407). As he suggests, \u201cL\u2019\u00c9ternel Retour est une pens\u00e9e folle pour Nietzsche. C\u2019est la pens\u00e9e de la folie, et il la redoute au point de s\u2019effrayer d\u2019avoir \u00e0 la porter\u2026<\/em>\u201d (EI, <\/em>p. 411). Foucault, for his part, can be read to suggest that the outside hides in those \u201cplaceless places, beckoning thresholds, closed, forbidden spaces that are nevertheless exposed to the winds, hallways fanned by doors that open rooms for unbearable encounters and create gulfs between them across which voices cannot carry and that even muffle cries; corridors leading to more corridors where the night resounds, beyond sleep, with the smothered voices of those who speak, with the cough of the sick, with the wails of the dying, with the suspended breath of those who ceaselessly cease living; a long and narrow room, like a tunnel\u2026\u201d (MB<\/em>, p. 24). These are the spaces of the asylum, the prison, the hospital ward, the clinic, the closet\u2026 la vie des hommes inf\u00e2mes<\/em>. These are the spaces that Foucault would inhabit in all his writings. The outside, the abnormal, the limit: in this sense, writing and thinking from outside can be a radical political act\u2014and can serve as a model for politics.<\/p>\n

Third, even more, writing, the written word, the text, books bear radical potential, magical power. Michael Taussig<\/a>, who will speak next seminar<\/a> on Gilles Deleuze, has a brilliant chapter on \u201cbooks of magia<\/em>\u201d in his work, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man<\/em>. What he shows there is the way in which the written word trumps, how it exercises remarkable power. \u201cThe book of the Church, nature as the book of the Lord, the books of law, writing, paper atop official paper\u2014these leak magic into the hands of the people they dominate\u201d (Taussig Shamanism<\/em>, page 264). Taussig discusses B. Traven\u2019s ideas in The Rebellion of the Hanged<\/em>, that in order to have a real revolution, one has to set on fire all the words, all the papers, all the laws, and seals and records\u2014the vital records, the land records, the judicial records. (and somewhat ironically, Taussig adds, through the voice of a wise one, that \u201cwith regard to burning papers I have read nothing. That\u2019s not written in any book. I discovered that in my own head.\u201d (Quoting from B. Traven, in Michael Taussig\u2019s Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man<\/em>, page 263)).[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

What is that magical power of the written word? In his essay, \u201cBlanchot l\u2019insoumis,\u201d in Blanchot dans son si\u00e8cle<\/em> [Colloque de Cerisy], (Lyons, 2009, p. 289-314), \u00c9tienne Balibar brilliantly demonstrates the power of Blanchot\u2019s writing: one of the principal authors of an influential tract from 1960\u2014the Manifest of the 121, known formally as the D\u00e9claration sur le droit \u00e0 l\u2019insoumission dans la guerre d\u2019Alg\u00e9rie<\/em> (Declaration on the right to insubordination in the context of the Algerian War<\/em>)\u2014signed by 121 public intellectuals, that often would be wrongly attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre. It was instead Blanchot\u2019s pen that moved so many. It was his writing that had such deep political effects. Yes, the writing. Perhaps, in the end then, \u201cwriting that, by its own strength slowly liberated, seems to dedicate itself only to itself\u201d may also ultimately serve \u201cspeech or idealist thought.\u201d (L\u2019Entretien infini<\/em>, vii) For some writers\u2014and I have some in mind, you may have others\u2014this is undoubtedly possible. It is real. (And it remains ever changing. In our most immediate present in the West, for instance, new writing challenges arise with the Internet and, increasingly, the need to sculpt prose in less than 140 characters. This is the new Twitter haiku, which some politicians seem to master more than others).<\/p>\n

To conclude with Blanchot, we may return to the very last sentence of his introductory note to L\u2019Entretien infini<\/em>: \u201c\u00c9crire, sous ce point de vue, est la violence la plus grande, car elle transgresse la Loi, toute loi et sa proper loi.\u201d (EI<\/em>, p. viii) Writing, he suggests, is the greatest violence\u2014that, I take it, has radical political potential.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NOTES<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> For details, see Leslie Hill, Maurice Blanchot and Fragmentary Writing: A Change of Epoch<\/em> (Continuum, 2012), p. 31 et seq.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> There is ongoing controversy whether to acknowledge Nietzsche\u2019s aphoristic style or to call it \u201cfragmentary,\u201d which is of course the source of profound debates and discussion between Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, Derrida, etc., as we will see in later seminars.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> For an excellent further discussion of this, see Leslie Hill, Maurice Blanchot and Fragmentary Writing: A Change of Epoch<\/em> (Continuum, 2012), p. 33-37.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> See, e.g., Maurice Blanchot, \u201cMichel Foucault as I Imagine Him,\u201d in Foucault\/Blanchot<\/em> (Zone Books, 1987), p. 63-64.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Michel Foucault, \u201cMaurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside,\u201d in Foucault\/Blanchot<\/em> (Zone Books, 1987), p. 27.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> The idea of needing to burn the written word also reminds me of this passage in \u201cL\u2019exp\u00e9rience-limite,\u201d where Blanchot, writing about those who betrayed Nietzsche, writes that \u201cOn aimerait recommender aux \u00e9crivains: ne laissez rien derri\u00e8re vous, d\u00e9truisez vous-memes tout ce que vous d\u00e9siez voir disparaitre, ne soyez pas failbes, ne vous fiez \u00e0 personne; vous serez n\u00e9cessairement trahis un jour.\u201d (EI<\/em>, p. 207)<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> On this question, Annelise Shuldte-Nordholt also recommends that we read Avant dire<\/em> by Michael Holland, that just came out last summer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"blanchot_maurice_du-cote-de-nietzsche-manuscrit-autographe_1946_edition-originale_1_48342\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt Nietzsche was, in \u00c9tienne Balibar\u2019s words, Maurice Blanchot\u2019s \u201cdouble.\u201d Blanchot (1907-2003) engaged Nietzsche early\u2014shortly after World War II\u2014and throughout the rest of his writings.[1] In La Part du feu published by Gallimard in 1949, Blanchot motivates… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51935],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-3-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}