Maurice Blanchot: Literature as the Space of Politics

Abstract

Literature (art) and politics are often compared and brought together, inasmuch as they both engage with, transform, and renounce the human world as it is, and as they both share—in their key moments—a world disclosing power that allows them to generate a world that was not. The events of May ’68 foster a further affinity with writing: the numerous slogans—whose echo, variations, and relevance are still sensed—bear witness to a complicit pact between words (in their artistic inscription as graffiti) and political upheaval. Yet, this paper attempts to revitalize the relationship of art and politics, by drawing on Maurice Blanchot’s view of literature as a sovereign—insubordinate to worldly, and political, causes—realm. With particular reference to some of Blanchot’s key texts, which preceded—and foretold the success/failure of—May ’68, this paper explores how literature and literary criticism become radically political in their autonomy, that is, in their turning toward (against) themselves, as forces of opposition that contest their conditions of (im)possibility. Unfolding Blanchot’s idiosyncratic account of literature as ‘committed non-commitment’ (dégagement engagé), this paper will contend that the essence of the political as a profound refusal, as put forth by the anti-authoritarian call of May 1968, is realized in and as the experience of literature.