1st Edition

Blanchot Extreme Contemporary

By Leslie Hill Copyright 1998
    316 Pages
    by Routledge

    320 Pages
    by Routledge

    Blanchot provides a compelling insight into one of the key figures in the development of postmodern thought. Although Blanchot's work is characterised by a fragmentary and complex style, Leslie Hill introduces clearly and accessibly the key themes in his work. He shows how Blanchot questions the very existence of philosophy and literature and how we may distinguish between them, stresses the importance of his political writings and the relationship between writing and history that characterised Blanchot's later work; and considers the relationship between Blanchot and key figures such as Emmanuel Levinas and Georges Bataille and how this impacted on his work.
    Placing Blanchot at the centre stage of writing in the twentieth century, Blanchot also sheds new light on Blanchot's political activities before and after the Second World War. This accessible introduction to Blanchot's thought also includes one of the most comprehensive bibliographies of his writings of the last twenty years.

    1 An intellectual itinerary 2 The (im)possibility of literature 3 Writing the neuter 4 The absence of the book 5 Extreme contemporary

    Biography

    Leslie Hill is Reader in French Studies at the University of Warwick, and the author of Beckett’s Fiction: In Different Words and Marguerite Duras: Apocalyptic Desires.

    'Excellent.' - Times Literary Supplement