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Introduction

Introduction Introduction LESLIE HILL AND MICHAEL HOLLAND The work of Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) spans almost the whole of the twentieth century. As a writer of fiction, literary critic, thinker, and political commentator, Blanchot fulfilled and exhausted some of the century’s most pressing challenges. The twentieth century, then, may be thought to have been Blanchot’s epoch, upon which he imprinted his unmistakeable signature and which left its indelible imprint on his work. Where does Blanchot leave the twentieth century, its thought, its literature, its engagement with the political? Blanchot himself was keenly aware that no epoch is ever properly contemporary with itself. The word epoch not only refers to a period in history, a delimited time or sequence of events, but also means a parenthesis, a pause, a moment where time is suspended. So if Blanchot speaks of his epoch from a place firmly embedded in the struggles and transformations of that epoch, he also writes from a place that exceeds the confines of that epoch, in which history in the received sense gives way to a time that is never present, always to come, yet at any point in time, always over. In what ways, then, does Blanchot’s writing http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Paragraph Edinburgh University Press

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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
0264-8334
eISSN
1750-0176
DOI
10.3366/para.2007.30.3.1
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Introduction LESLIE HILL AND MICHAEL HOLLAND The work of Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) spans almost the whole of the twentieth century. As a writer of fiction, literary critic, thinker, and political commentator, Blanchot fulfilled and exhausted some of the century’s most pressing challenges. The twentieth century, then, may be thought to have been Blanchot’s epoch, upon which he imprinted his unmistakeable signature and which left its indelible imprint on his work. Where does Blanchot leave the twentieth century, its thought, its literature, its engagement with the political? Blanchot himself was keenly aware that no epoch is ever properly contemporary with itself. The word epoch not only refers to a period in history, a delimited time or sequence of events, but also means a parenthesis, a pause, a moment where time is suspended. So if Blanchot speaks of his epoch from a place firmly embedded in the struggles and transformations of that epoch, he also writes from a place that exceeds the confines of that epoch, in which history in the received sense gives way to a time that is never present, always to come, yet at any point in time, always over. In what ways, then, does Blanchot’s writing

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ParagraphEdinburgh University Press

Published: Nov 1, 2007

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