Demonstrates Blanchot's ongoing importance for contemporary philosophical debate about technology, the post-human, and ecological thinkingDemonstrates a considerable shift in Blanchot's thinking from 1940s to 1980sHighlights the significance of Blanchot for important figures of twentieth-century French thought such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Bernard StieglerArgues for the continued relevance of Blanchot to twenty first-century debates in literary theory and criticismHolly Langstaff reappraises the influential French thinker Maurice Blanchot's writing from the 1940s to his late work in the 1980s, demonstrating how Blanchot's exploration of the question of technology remains decisive throughout his career.She situates Blanchot's fictional and critical work in the context of his thinking of art as techne - as it develops out of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. While Blanchot follows Heidegger in the view that writing is a form of techne, he never appeals for salvation from the menace of technology in the modern era. Rather, he sees in all forms of technology the opportunity for a new way of thinking beyond value. This, Blanchot calls an entirely different sort of affirmation.
Holly Langstaff is a Lecturer in French at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. She researches and teaches modern and contemporary French literature and thought. She runs the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
AcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIntroduction‘One of the most difficult but important tasks of our time’TechnologyPolitics1. Blanchot and Mallarmé: ‘The double state of the word’‘The double state of the word’Literary AutonomyFoundation and SuspensionLiterature as Deception‘But when is there literature?’2. An Inhuman InterruptionThe History of Being‘Why Poets?’Death: The Impossibility of PossibilityA TurningAnimals and Automation3. Technology and the NeuterLa TechniqueWriting as techne and Modern TechnologyThe Neuter: Kafka and The Last Man4. Inorganic WritingFragmentary Writing and TechnologyNature Gone HaywireConclusionBibliography
Langstaff offers a full reappraisal of Blanchot’s writing and his profound critical engagement with Martin Heidegger, specifically around the question of technology and its relation to art. She admirably and persuasively demonstrates that Blanchot’s engagement with technology is decisive throughout his career and fundamentally related to his understanding of literature.
Abraham Geil, Tomáš Jirsa, University of Amsterdam) Geil, Abraham (Senior Lecturer in the Media Studies Department, Palacky University Olomouc) Jirsa, Tomas (Associate Professor of Literary Studies, Tomás Jirsa
Abraham Geil, Tomáš Jirsa, University of Amsterdam) Geil, Abraham (Senior Lecturer in the Media Studies Department, Palacky University Olomouc) Jirsa, Tomas (Associate Professor of Literary Studies, Tomás Jirsa
Abraham Geil, Tomáš Jirsa, University of Amsterdam) Geil, Abraham (Senior Lecturer in the Media Studies Department, Palacky University Olomouc) Jirsa, Tomas (Associate Professor of Literary Studies, Tomás Jirsa
Paola Crespi, Sunil Manghani, University of London) Crespi, Paola (Visiting Research Fellow at the Topology Research Unit, Goldsmiths, University of Southampton) Manghani, Sunil (Professor of Theory, Practice and Critique, Winchester School of Art
John Beck, Ryan Bishop, University of Westminster) Beck, John (Professor of Modern Literature, University of Southampton) Bishop, Ryan (Professor of Global Arts and Politics and Co-director of the research group Archaeologies of Media and Technology, Winchester School of Art
Abraham Geil, Tomáš Jirsa, University of Amsterdam) Geil, Abraham (Senior Lecturer in the Media Studies Department, Palacky University Olomouc) Jirsa, Tomas (Associate Professor of Literary Studies, Tomás Jirsa