Out of this World: Gnostic Encounters in Modern French Literature and Thought

Bruno Chaouat is Professor of French at the University of Minnesota.

• IntroductionI. Escaping the World: Céline with LevinasII. Underworld: Bataille’s Gnostic ExistentialismIII. Emptying the World: A Twin Reading of Blanchot and DerridaIV. Intermezzo: Aborting the WorldV. Afterworld: Houellebecq’s Reluctant GnosticismANTIWORLD: (Toward a conclusion)

'Chaouat’s new book shows how strains of Gnosticism’s repudiation of “this world” have once again emerged to manage cultural and political disorientation—climate change, epidemics, the rapidity of technological change and the increasing obsolescence of human labor. As he shows brilliantly, these repudiations echo quests for authenticity in mid-twentieth-century French literature and thought. The encounters between Gnosticism and the work of thinkers like Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Emmanuel Levinas, and Michel Houllebecque (among others) address what Primo Levi called the “useless suffering” of Auschwitz and Hiroshima and continue to haunt our present. Chaouat’s work has always pushed us to think about literary and philosophical encounters with established traditions in innovative fashion. This book is but one more exemplar of the fruitfulness of his approach.' - Carolyn Dean