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{{Short description|French writer (1907–2003)}}
{{Redirect|Blanchot|the Chablis grand cru vineyard|Chablis wine}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2022}}
{{Infobox philosopher
|region = [[Western philosophy]]
|era = [[20th-century philosophy]]
|name = Maurice Blanchot
|image = Maurice_Blanchot_1927_identity_document_(cropped).jpg
|caption=Blanchot in 1927
|birth_date = 22 September 1907
|birth_place = [[Devrouze]], [[Saône-et-Loire]], France
|death_date = {{death date and age|2003|2|20|1907|9|22|df=y}}
|death_place = [[Le Mesnil-Saint-Denis]], France
|education = [[University of Strasbourg]] (B.A., 1922)<br>[[University of Paris]] (M.A., 1930)
|school_tradition = {{hlist|[[Continental philosophy]]|[[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] of [[aesthetic experience]]<ref>Max Pensky, ''The Actuality of Adorno: Critical Essays on Adorno and the Postmodern'', SUNY Press, 1997, p. 162.</ref>}}
|main_interests = {{hlist|[[Ethics]]|[[poetics]]|philosophy of death|[[philosophy of language]]|[[literary criticism]]|[[political philosophy]]}}
|notable_ideas = The Neutral (''le neutre'')<br>Right to death<br>Two kinds of death{{efn|Blanchot's premise is that the first death is the actual [[Event (philosophy)|event]], happening in its own history; the second death is the [[Virtuality (philosophy)|virtual]] form of the event, which does not tangibly "happen".<ref>Maurice Blanchot, ''The Station Hill Blanchot Reader: Fiction and Literary Essays'' (New York, Station Hill Press, Inc., 1999), p. 100.</ref><ref>Osaki, Harumi, "Killing Oneself, Killing the Father: On Deleuze's Suicide in Comparison with Blanchot's Notion of Death", ''Literature and Theology'' (2008) '''22'''(1).</ref>}}
|academic_advisors = [[Maurice Pradines]]<ref>{{cite book |last=Bident |first=Christophe |translator-last=McKeane |translator-first=John |title=Maurice Blanchot: A Critical Biography |location=New York |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=2019 |page=22 |isbn=978-0-8232-8176-3 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv8d5tnj |quote=Blanchot must have had a number of well-known professors, such as—in "general philosophy"—Maurice Pradines}}</ref>
}}

'''Maurice Blanchot''' ({{IPAc-en|b|l|ɑː|n|ˈ|ʃ|oʊ}} {{respell|blahn|SHOH}}; {{IPA|fr|blɑ̃ʃo|lang}}; 22 September 1907 – 20 February 2003) was a French writer, philosopher and [[literary theory|literary theorist]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Kuzma |first=Joseph |title=Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003)
|website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=24 December 2023 |url=https://iep.utm.edu/maurice-blanchot}}</ref> His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside [[Poetics|poetic]] theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on [[Post-structuralism|post-structuralist]] philosophers such as [[Gilles Deleuze]], [[Michel Foucault]], [[Jacques Derrida]] and [[Jean-Luc Nancy]].

==Biography==
===Pre-1945===
Blanchot was born in the village of Quain ([[Saône-et-Loire]]) on 22 September 1907.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Taylor|first1=Victor E.|last2=Vinquist|first2=Charles E.|title=Encyclopedia of Postmodernism|date=2002|publisher=Routledge|location=London|page=36|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=huGEAgAAQBAJ&q=blanchot+22+1907&pg=PA36|access-date=1 August 2014|isbn=9781134743094}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Zakir|first1=Paul|title=Maruice Blanchot: Political Writings 1953–1993|date=2010|publisher=Fordham University Press|page=36|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RWI6vH-ZcxgC&q=blanchot+27+1907&pg=PR57|chapter=Chronology|isbn=9780823229970}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Johnson|first1=Douglas|title=Obituary: Maurice Blanchot|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/mar/01/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries|access-date=1 August 2014|work=The Guardian|date=1 March 2003}}</ref>

Blanchot studied philosophy from 1926 at the [[University of Strasbourg]], where he represented [[monarchist]] views, was a committee member of a student association modelled on the German ''[[Burschenschaft]]en'', and became a close lifelong friend of the [[Lithuania]]n-born [[French Jewish]] [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenologist]] [[Emmanuel Levinas]]. On his friend's recommendation, he read [[Martin Heidegger]]'s newly published ''[[Being and Time]]'' and described it as an "intellectual shock".<ref>{{citation |last=Lescourret |first=Marie-Anne |title=Emmanuel Levinas |edition=2nd |location=Paris |publisher=[[Groupe Flammarion|Flammarion]] |year=2006 |pp=64, 66, 68 |isbn=2082105466 |url=https://archive.org/details/emmanuellevinas0000lesc |lang=fr}}</ref> In 1930 he earned his {{ill|Diplôme d'études supérieures|lt=DES (''diplôme d'études supérieures'')|fr|Diplôme d'études supérieures en France}}, roughly equivalent to an [[Master of Arts|M.A.]] at the [[University of Paris]], with a thesis titled "La Conception du dogmatisme chez les sceptiques anciens d'après Sextus Empiricus" ("The [[Concept]]ion of [[Dogmatism]] in the [[Ancient]] [[Sceptic]]s According to [[Sextus Empiricus]]").<ref name="Schrift">Alan D. Schrift (2006), ''Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers'', Blackwell Publishing, p. 101.</ref>

He then embarked on a career as a [[political journalist]] in Paris. From 1932 to 1940 he was editor of the [[mainstream conservative]] daily ''[[Journal des débats]]''.<ref name="Schrift" /> Early in the 1930s he contributed to a series of radical [[nationalist]] magazines while also serving as editor of the fiercely anti-German daily ''Le rempart'' in 1933 and as editor of Paul Lévy's [[anti-Nazi]] [[polemic]]al weekly ''Aux écoutes''. In 1936 and 1937 he also contributed to the [[far right]] monthly ''Combat'' and to the [[nationalist]]-[[syndicalist]] daily ''L'Insurgé'', which eventually ceased publication – largely as a result of Blanchot's intervention – because of the anti-semitism of some of its contributors. There is no dispute that Blanchot was nevertheless the author of a series of violently polemical articles attacking the government of the day and its confidence in the politics of the [[League of Nations]], and warned persistently against the threat to peace in Europe posed by [[Nazi Germany]].

In December 1940, he met [[Georges Bataille]], who had written strong [[anti-fascist]] articles in the thirties, and who would remain a close friend until his death in 1962. Blanchot worked in Paris during the [[Nazi occupation]]. In order to support his family he continued to work as a book reviewer for the ''Journal des débats'' from 1941 to 1944, writing for instance about such figures as Sartre and Camus, Bataille and Michaux, Mallarmé and Duras for a putatively [[Philippe Pétain|Pétainist]] [[Vichy France|Vichy]] readership. In these reviews he laid the foundations for later French [[critical thinking]] by examining the ambiguous [[rhetoric]]al nature of language and the irreducibility of the written word to notions of truth or falsity. He refused the editorship of the [[collaborationist]] ''[[Nouvelle Revue Française]]'' for which, as part of an elaborate ploy, he had been suggested by [[Jean Paulhan]]. He was active in the Resistance and remained a bitter opponent of the fascist, anti-semitic novelist and journalist [[Robert Brasillach]], who was the principal leader of the pro-[[Nazi collaboration]]ist movement. In June 1944, Blanchot was almost executed by a Nazi firing squad (as recounted in his text ''The Instant of My Death'').

===Post-1945===
After the war, Blanchot began working only as a novelist and literary critic. In 1947, Blanchot left Paris for the secluded village of [[Èze]] in the south of France, where he spent the next decade of his life. Like [[Sartre]] and other French intellectuals of the era, Blanchot avoided the academy as a means of livelihood, instead relying on his pen. Importantly, from 1953 to 1968, he published regularly in ''Nouvelle Revue Française''. At the same time, he began a lifestyle of relative isolation, often not seeing close friends (like [[Emmanuel Levinas]]) for years, while continuing to write lengthy letters to them. Part of the reason for his self-imposed isolation (and only part of it – his isolation was closely connected to his writing and is often featured among his characters) was that, for most of his life, Blanchot suffered from poor health.

Blanchot's political activities after the war shifted to the left. He is widely credited with being one of the main authors of the important "[[Manifesto of the 121]]", named after the number of its signatories, who included [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], [[Robert Antelme]], [[Alain Robbe-Grillet]], [[Marguerite Duras]], [[René Char]], [[Henri Lefebvre]], [[Alain Resnais]], [[Simone Signoret]] and others, which supported the rights of conscripts to refuse to serve in the colonial [[Algerian War|war in Algeria]]. The manifesto was crucial to the intellectual response to the war.

In [[May 68|May 1968]], Blanchot once again emerged from personal obscurity, in support of the student protests. It was his sole public appearance after the war. Yet for fifty years he remained a consistent champion of modern literature and its tradition in French letters. During the later years of his life, he repeatedly wrote against the intellectual attraction to fascism, and notably against [[Heidegger]]'s [[post-war]] silence over [[The Holocaust]].

Blanchot wrote more than thirty works of fiction, literary criticism, and philosophy. Up to the 1970s, he worked continually in his writing to break the barriers between what are generally perceived as different "[[genre]]s" or "tendencies", and much of his later work moves freely between narration and philosophical investigation.

In 1983, Blanchot published ''La Communauté inavouable'' (''The Unavowable Community''). This work inspired ''The Inoperative Community'' (1986),<ref>See [https://lectures.revues.org/16166 ''Jean-Luc Nancy, La communauté désavouée'' at Lectures – Revues.org].</ref> [[Jean-Luc Nancy]]'s attempt to approach community in a non-religious, non-utilitarian and un-political exegesis.

He died on 20 February 2003 in [[Le Mesnil-Saint-Denis]], Yvelines, France.

==Work==
Blanchot's work explores a philosophy of death, not in [[Humanism|humanistic]] terms, but through concerns of [[paradox]], impossibility, nonsense and the [[Noumenon|noumenal]] that stem from the conceptual impossibility of death. He constantly engaged with the "question of literature", a simultaneous enactment and interrogation of the idiosyncratic act of writing. For Blanchot, "literature begins at the moment when literature becomes a question".<ref>Maurice Blanchot, "Literature and the Right to Death" in ''The Work of Fire'', C. Mandel (trans), Stanford University Press, 1995, p. 300.</ref>

Blanchot drew on the poetics of [[Stéphane Mallarmé]] and [[Paul Celan]], as well as the concept of negation in the [[Hegelian dialectic]], for his theory of [[literary language]] as something that is always anti-realist and so distinct from everyday experience that [[Realism (arts)|realism]] does not simply stand for literature about reality, but for literature concerning paradoxes made by the qualities of the act of writing. Blanchot's literary theory parallels Hegel's philosophy, establishing that actual reality always succeeds conceptual reality. For instance, "I say flower," Mallarmé wrote in "Poetry in Crisis", "and outside the oblivion to which my voice relegates any shape, [...] there arises [...] the one absent from every bouquet."<ref>Stephane Mallarmé, "Poetry in Crisis" in ''Selected Poetry and Prose'', Mary Ann Cawes (ed), New Directions, 1982, p. 75.</ref>

What the everyday use of language steps over or negates is the physical reality of the thing for the sake of the abstract concept. Literature – through its use of symbolism and metaphor – frees language from this utilitarianism, thereby drawing attention to the fact that language refers not to the physical thing, but only to an idea of it. Literature, Blanchot writes, remains fascinated by this presence of absence, and attention is drawn, through the sonority and rhythm of words, to the materiality of language.

Blanchot's best-known fictional works are ''Thomas l'Obscur'' (''Thomas the Obscure''), an unsettling ''[[récit]]'' (which "is not the narration of an event, but that event itself, the approach to that event, the place where that event is made to happen ...")<ref>Maurice Blanchot, "The Song of the Sirens", 1959</ref> about the experience of reading and loss, ''Death Sentence'', ''Aminadab'', and ''The Most High''. His central theoretical works are "Literature and the Right to Death" (in ''The Work of Fire'' and ''The Gaze of Orpheus''), ''The Space of Literature'', ''The Infinite Conversation'', and ''The Writing of the Disaster''.

Many of Blanchot's principal translators into English have since established reputations as prose stylists and poets in their own right; some of the more well-known of them include [[Lydia Davis]], [[Paul Auster]] and [[Pierre Joris]].

===Themes===
Blanchot engages with [[Martin Heidegger|Heidegger]] on the question of how literature and death are both experienced as an anonymous passivity, an experience that Blanchot variously refers to as "the Neutral" (''le neutre''). Unlike Heidegger, Blanchot instead rejects the possibility of an authentic relation to death, ''because'' he rejects the conceptual possibility of death. In a manner similar to [[Emmanuel Levinas|Levinas]], who Blanchot later became influenced by with regards to the question of responsibility to [[Other (philosophy)|the Other]], he reverses Heidegger's position on death as the "possibility of the absolute impossibility" of [[Dasein]], instead viewing death as the "impossibility of every possibility".<ref>Maurice Blanchot, ''The Writing of the Disaster'' (trans. Ann Smock), University of Nebraska, 1995</ref>

==Selected bibliography==
===Fiction and narrations (''[[récit]]s'')===
*''Thomas l'Obscur'' (1941; revised 1950)''. Thomas the Obscure'', trans. Robert Lamberton (David Lewis, 1973; Station Hill Press, 1995)
* ''Aminadab'' (1942). ''Aminadab'', trans. Jeff Fort (University of Nebraska Press, 2002)
*''[[L'Arrêt de mort]]'' (1948). ''Death Sentence'', trans. [[Lydia Davis]] (Station Hill Press, 1978)
*''Le Très-Haut'' (1949). ''The Most High'', trans. Allan Stoekl (University of Nebraska Press, 1996)
*''Au moment voulu'' (1951). ''When the Time Comes'', trans. Lydia Davis (Station Hill Press, 1985)
*''Le Ressassement éternel'' (1951). ''Vicious Circles''
*''Celui qui ne m'accompagnait pas'' (1953). ''The One Who Was Standing Apart from Me'', trans. Lydia Davis (Station Hill Press, 1992)
*''Le Dernier homme'' (1957). ''The Last Man'', trans. Lydia Davis (Columbia University Press, 1987)
*''L'Attente l'oubli'' (1962). ''Awaiting Oblivion'', trans. John Gregg (University of Nebraska Press, 1997)
*''La Folie du jour'' (1973). ''The Madness of the Day'', trans. Lydia Davis (Station Hill Press, 1981)
*''Après Coup'', preceded by ''Le Ressassement éternel'' (1983). ''Vicious Circles: Two Fictions & "After the Fact"'', trans. [[Paul Auster]] (Station Hill Press, 1985)
*''L'Instant de ma mort'' (1994). ''The Instant of My Death'', trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford University Press, 2000)

===Philosophical or theoretical works===
*''Faux Pas'' (1943). ''Faux Pas'', trans. [[Charlotte Mandell]] (Stanford University Press, 2001)
*''La Part du feu'' (1949). ''The Work of Fire'', trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford University Press, 1995)
*''Lautréamont et Sade'' (1949). ''Lautréamont and Sade'', trans. Stuart Kendall and Michelle Kendall (Stanford University Press, 2004)
*''L'Espace littéraire'' (1955). ''The Space of Literature'', trans. Ann Smock (University of Nebraska Press, 1982)
*''Le Livre à venir'' (1959). ''The Book to Come'', trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford University Press, 2003)
*''L'Entretien infini'' (1969). ''The Infinite Conversation'', trans. Susan Hanson (University of Minnesota Press, 1993)
*''L'Amitié'' (1971). ''Friendship'', trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford University Press, 1997)
*''Le Pas au-delà'' (1973). ''The Step Not Beyond'', trans. Lycette Nelson (State University of New York Press, 1992)
*''L'Ecriture du désastre'' (1980). ''The Writing of the Disaster'', trans. Ann Smock (University of Nebraska Press, 1986)
*''La Communauté inavouable'' (1983). ''The Unavowable Community'', trans. [[Pierre Joris]] (Station Hill Press, 1988)
*''Une voix venue d'ailleurs'' (2002). ''A Voice from Elsewhere'', trans. Charlotte Mandell (State University of New York Press, 2007)

=== Articles and essays ===

* ''Chroniques littéraires du « Journal des Débats », avril 1941-août 1944'' (2008)
** ''Into Disaster: Chronicles of Intellectual Life, 1941'', trans. Michael Holland (Fordham University Press, 2014)
** ''Desperate Clarity: Chronicles of Intellectual Life, 1942'', trans. Michael Holland (Fordham University Press, 2014)
** ''A World in Ruins: Chronicles of Intellectual Life, 1943'', trans. Michael Holland (Fordham University Press, 2016)
** ''Death Now: Chronicles of Intellectual Life, 1944'', trans. Michael Holland (Fordham University Press, 2019)

=== Compilations in English ===

* ''The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays'', ed. P. Adams Sitney, trans. Lydia Davis (Station Hill Press, 1981)
* ''The Sirens' Song: Selected Essays'', ed. [[Gabriel Josipovici]] (Indiana University Press, 1982)
* ''The Blanchot Reader'', ed. Michael Holland (Blackwell, 1995)
* ''The Station Hill Blanchot Reader'', ed. George Quasha (Station Hill Press, 1999)
* ''Political Writings, 1953-1993'', ed. Zakir Paul (Fordham University Press, 2010)

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

== References ==
{{reflist|22em}}

== Further reading ==
* Michael Holland (ed.), ''The Blanchot Reader'' (Blackwell, 1995)
* [[George Quasha]] (ed.), ''The Station Hill Blanchot Reader'' (Station Hill, 1998)
* [[Michel Foucault]], ''Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside'' (Zone, 1989)
* Jacques Derrida, ''Demeure: Fiction and Testimony'' (Stanford, 2000)
* [[Emmanuel Levinas]], ''On Maurice Blanchot'' in ''Proper Names'' (Stanford, 1996)
* Leslie Hill, ''Blanchot: Extreme Contemporary'' (Routledge, 1997)
* Gerald Bruns, ''Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy'' (Johns Hopkins Press, 1997)
* Christophe Bident, ''Maurice Blanchot, partenaire invisible'' (Paris: Champ Vallon, 1998) {{ISBN|978-2-87673-253-7}}
* Hadrien Buclin, ''Maurice Blanchot ou l'autonomie littéraire'' (Lausanne: Antipodes, 2011)
* Manola Antonioli, ''Maurice Blanchot Fiction et théorie'', Paris, Kimé, 1999
* Élie Ayache, ''L'écriture Postérieure'', Paris, Complicités, 2006
* [http://www.editions-complicites.com Éditions Complicités]: "Maurice Blanchot de proche en proche", collection Compagnie de Maurice Blanchot, 2007
* [http://www.editions-complicites.com Éditions Complicités]: "L'épreuve du temps chez Maurice Blanchot", collection Compagnie de Maurice Blanchot, 2005
* [http://www.editions-complicites.com Éditions Complicites]: "L'Oeuvre du Féminin dans l'écriture de Maurice Blanchot", collection Compagnie de Maurice Blanchot, 2004
* Françoise Collin, ''Maurice Blanchot et la question de l'écriture'', Paris, Gallimard, 1971
* Arthur Cools, ''Langage et Subjectivité vers une approche du différend entre Maurice Blanchot et Emmanuel Levinas'', Louvain, Peeters, 2007
* ''Critique'' n°229, 1966 (numéro spécial, textes de Jean Starobinsky, Georges Poulet, Levinas, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault, René Char...)
* Jacques Derrida, ''Parages'', Paris, Galilée, 1986
* Jacques Derrida, ''Demeure. Maurice Blanchot'', Paris, Galilée, 1994
* [[Christopher Fynsk]], ''Last Steps: Maurice Blanchot's Exilic Writing'', Fordham University Press, 2013
* [[Christopher Fynsk]], ''Infant Figures: the death of the infans and other scenes of origin'', Stanford University Press, 2000
* Mark Hewson, ''Blanchot and Literary Criticism'', NY, Continuum, 2011
* Eric Hoppenot, ed., ''L'Œuvre du féminin dans l'écriture de Maurice Blanchot'', Paris, Complicités, 2004
* Eric Hoppenot, ed., coordonné par Arthur COOLS, ''L'épreuve du temps chez Maurice Blanchot'', Paris, Complicités, 2006
* Eric Hoppenot & Alain Milon, ed., ''Levinas Blanchot penser la différence'', Paris, Presses Universitaires de Paris X, 2008
* [[Mario Kopić]], ''Enigma Blanchot'' (Pescanik, 2013)
* Jean-Luc Lannoy, ''Langage, perception, mouvement. Blanchot et Merleau-Ponty'', Grenoble, Jérôme Millon, 2008
* [[Roger Laporte]], ''l'Ancien, l'effroyablement Ancien'' in ''Études'', Paris, P.O.L, 1990
* ''Lignes'' n°11, 1990 (numéro spécial contenant tout le dossier de ''La revue internationale'')
* Pierre Madaule, ''Une tâche sérieuse ?'', Paris, Gallimard, 1973, pp. 74–75
* [[Henri Meschonnic|Meschonnic, Henri]], ''Maurice Blanchot ou l'écriture hors langage'' in ''Poésie sans réponse'' (''Pour la poétique V''), Paris, Gallimard, 1978, pp. 78–134
* Ginette Michaud, ''Tenir au secret (Derrida, Blanchot)'', Paris, Galilée, 2006
* Anna Norpoth, ''Die Forderung des Werkes. Inspiration, Schreiben und das Werk bei Maurice Blanchot'', Berlin, Ch. A. Bachmann, 2022. https://hss-opus.ub.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/opus4/frontdoor/index/index/docId/14498
* Anne-Lise Schulte-Nordholt, ''Maurice Blanchot, l'écriture comme expérience du dehors'', Genève, Droz, 1995
*[[Jadranka Skorin-Kapov]], ''The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation'' (Lexington Books, 2015)
*[[Jadranka Skorin-Kapov]], ''The Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics: Exceeding of Expectations, Ecstasy, Sublimity'' (Lexington Books, 2016)
* Daniel Wilhelm, ''Intrigues littéraires'', Paris, Lignes/Manifeste, 2005
* Zarader, Marlène, ''L'être et le neutre, à partir de Maurice Blanchot'', Paris, Verdier, 2000
* Fitzgerald, Kevin, "The Negative Eschatology of Maurice Blanchot" (master's thesis, New College of California, 1999) http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/blanchot/kf/tocmn.html
* [[Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe]], ''Ending and Unending Agony: On Maurice Blanchot.'' New York: Fordham University Press, 2015

{{Continental philosophy}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Blanchot, Maurice}}
[[Category:1907 births]]
[[Category:2003 deaths]]
[[Category:Modernist writers]]
[[Category:20th-century French philosophers]]
[[Category:Franz Kafka scholars]]
[[Category:French ethicists]]
[[Category:French literary critics]]
[[Category:French literary theorists]]
[[Category:20th-century French male novelists]]
[[Category:French monarchists]]
[[Category:French political philosophers]]
[[Category:Phenomenologists]]
[[Category:People from Saône-et-Loire]]
[[Category:University of Strasbourg alumni]]
[[Category:Signatories of the Manifesto of the 121]]

Maurice Blanchot - Revision history

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