Forgetfulness Must: Politics and Filiation in Blanchot and Derrida

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes This is the text of a talk given at a conference on ‘Politics and Filiation’, held at the Manhattan Campus of the State University of New York Stonybrook in November 2002 and sponsored by the College International de Philosophie in Paris. The respondent was Jacques Derrida. It builds on analyses of Blanchot, Derrida and Levinas given in my earlier work, see in particular the final chapter of Ethics‐Politics‐Subjectivity (London and New York, Verso, 1999). 1. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié (Paris: Galilée, 1994). For references to Blanchot, see pp. 55, 56–57, 73, 89, 100, 219, 234, 295/46, 46–47, 55, 70, 82, 194, 207 and 264. 2. See Jacques Derrida, ‘The Politics of Friendship’, The Journal of Philosophy, 85:11 (November 1988), pp. 632–644 (pp. 643–44). These passages are an abbreviated version of some of the closing pages of Chapter 10 of Politiques de l'amitié, cf. pp. 322–29, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London: Verso, 1997), pp. 290–96. 3. Dionys Mascolo, A la recherche d'un communisme de pensée (Paris: Editions Fourbis, 1993); and Maurice Blanchot, Pour l'amitié (Paris: Editions Fourbis, 1996). Translations are my own. 4. Maurice Blanchot, Pour l'amitié, pp. 31–34. 5. Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, Part II, pp. 46–47. 6. J. Hoffmeister, Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe (Hamburg: Philosophische Bibliothek, 1955), p. 238; and Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Band 4, p. 683. See also in this regard a helpful article by Erich Heintel, ‘Vom Sinn der Freundschaft’, in Von der Notwendigkeit der Philosophie in der Gegenwart, ed. H. Kohlenberger and W. Lütterfelds (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1976), pp. 190–221; see especially pp. 192–93 and 199–200. 7. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié, p. 316/ p. 284. Nietzsche's words are also cited towards the end of the original English version of ‘The Politics of Friendship’, p. 643. 8. It would be necessary to read Blanchot's remarks on 1968 together with La Communauté inavouable (Paris: Minuit, 1983), a text itself mentioned by Derrida in a series of footnotes to Politiques de l'amitié, pp. 56–57, 89/ p. 46–47 and 70; and see especially p. 337, fn.1./ p. 304, n.32. 9. Maurice Blanchot, Pour l'amitié, p. 31. 10. Maurice Blanchot, Pour l'amitié, p. 9. 11. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié, p. 14/ p.x. 12. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié, p. 328/ p. 295. 13. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié, p. 324/ p. 291. 14. ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, Penguin Freud Library, ed. and trans. James Strachey, 20 vols (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), XI, p. 267. 15. Maurice Blanchot, L'amitié (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), p. 330. 16. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié, p. 328/ p. 295. 17. Maurice Blanchot, Pour l'amitié, pp. 33–34. 18. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié, p. 322/ p. 290. 19. Maurice Blanchot, Pour L'amitié, p. 34. 20. Maurice Blanchot, Pour L'amitié, p. 33. 21. Maurice Blanchot, Pour L'amitié p. 35. 22. On this question, see above Chapters 8 and 9. 23. Jacques Derrida, Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Galilée, 1997), p. 52, n.2 24. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié, p. 87. 25. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié, p. 88/ 69. 26. Maurice Blanchot, L'entretien infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), pp. 70–105. 27. Maurice Blanchot, L'entretien infini, pp. 100–101. 28. See Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et Infini (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961), p. 62; Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 89. Cited in Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx (Paris, Galilée, 1993), p. 48. See also ‘The Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’’, in D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld and D. G. Carlson, eds, Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 22. 29. I refer to Hent De Vries's paper given at a conference on Politiques de l'amitié held in Tilburg in 1997. 30. For the Derrida quote, see ‘The Politics of Friendship’, p. 643. Derrida uses the same formulation to describe Blanchot in Politiques de l'amitié, pp. 322/290. 31. Maurice Blanchot, ‘L'amitié’, in L'amitié, p. 328; Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié, p. 327/ 294. 32. Maurice Blanchot, ‘L'amitié’, p. 328. 33. Maurice Blanchot, ‘L'amitié’, p. 329. 34. Maurice Blanchot, ‘L'amitie’, p. 329.