Unmade in its image: the spacing of the sentence and the exposure of thought in Blanchot
Unmade in its image: the spacing of the sentence and the exposure of thought in Blanchot
A major concern of Blanchot’s early writings is the nature of the literary image but in his later works this appears to be replaced by a thinking of fragmentary writing. This change reflects a tension in which the images that arise through writing deliver a mode of spacing that places an aporetic pressure on its sentences, leading them to break down. To draw out this inter-relation I will examine Blanchot’s fictional and critical writings at a moment when the pressures of the image are felt most acutely, exposing the peculiar form of dialectics that emerges from it and the concomitant material spacing of language and thought, which, from his earliest works, marks a profound if not abyssal ambiguity of presence.
Aporias, Blanchot, Fragmentary writing, Images, Space
739-758
Allen, William S.
ef9ab226-9ae1-43be-a747-4fe394537116
Allen, William S.
ef9ab226-9ae1-43be-a747-4fe394537116
Allen, William S.
(2016)
Unmade in its image: the spacing of the sentence and the exposure of thought in Blanchot.
Textual Practice, 32 (5), .
(doi:10.1080/0950236X.2016.1268200).
Abstract
A major concern of Blanchot’s early writings is the nature of the literary image but in his later works this appears to be replaced by a thinking of fragmentary writing. This change reflects a tension in which the images that arise through writing deliver a mode of spacing that places an aporetic pressure on its sentences, leading them to break down. To draw out this inter-relation I will examine Blanchot’s fictional and critical writings at a moment when the pressures of the image are felt most acutely, exposing the peculiar form of dialectics that emerges from it and the concomitant material spacing of language and thought, which, from his earliest works, marks a profound if not abyssal ambiguity of presence.
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Accepted/In Press date: 10 March 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 16 December 2016
Keywords:
Aporias, Blanchot, Fragmentary writing, Images, Space
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Local EPrints ID: 421676
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/421676
ISSN: 0950-236X
PURE UUID: 86f5bee2-f9a9-4447-a859-c0e3f42be1ba
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Date deposited: 21 Jun 2018 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:10
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Author:
William S. Allen
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