Blanchot, Writing and the Politico-Religious

Abstract

1This article provides a brief critical introduction to the essays by Maurice Blanchot that appear or are the subject of discussion in this issue of the Journal for Cultural Research. These essays, in one way or the other, relate to the Indian context. More than the question of Blanchot’s critical attitude towards the reception of either Mahatma Gandhi or Indian spirituality in the European intellectual milieu, the author attempts to understand the basis of Blanchot’s argumentation, especially with reference to the “politico-religious” and “writing”. The importance of the notions of the “impossibility of death” and “passivity” which he developed in relation to Levinas’s work has been focused on. In spite of his early orientation in the Christian religion, we see that Blanchot, in his later writings which emphasize an ‘extreme’ literary mode, seems to have striven towards the dissolving of the opposition between East and West, between theism and atheism, and between religion and literature. It is possible that he was thus heralding a post-Christian, post-theological, post-theistic and a postmodern world. 1. This article is dedicated to the memory of Paul Fletcher.