Slought is pleased to announce “On Maurice Blanchot and the Political,” a conversation on the political works of Maurice Blanchot, on Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. It will feature Zakir Paul, Ann Smock, and Helen Tartar in conversation and will be moderated by Jean-Michel Rabate. The event serves as the book launch for Maurice Blanchot, Political Writings 1953-1993, translated and edited by Zakir Paul and recently published by Fordham University Press.

The young Blanchot first emerged as a journalist committed to the far right. He reached adulthood during what Emmanuel Mounier ironically called the time of le désordre établi, the established disorder. Fascism and communism were both vying for supremacy in a world in which France seemed weak and impotent, threatened by an impending war it could not win. What frightened Blanchot was the specter of Homo Europaeus, a creature who risks having no politics or thought and attains only mediocrity. Blanchot’s earlier political journalism reminds us how deceptively facile it is to refuse established forms of authority. However, only after the war was he able to reformulate his task as one of learning not only how to refuse but how to sustain the power of refusal through “rigor of thought and modesty of expression.”

Maurice Blanchot, Political Writings 1953-1993 collects documents, which range in subject from the French-Algerian War and the mass movements of May 1968 to postwar debates about the Shoah and beyond. A large number of the featured tracts, letters, and fragments were written anonymously and signed collectively, often in response to current events. The topics he addresses include the right to insubordination in the French-Algerian War, the construction of the Berlin Wall and repression in Eastern Europe, the mass movements of 1968, and personal responses to Heidegger, Levinas, and Robert Antelme, among others. When read together they form a testament to what political writing could be: not merely writing on the political, nor politicizing the written word, but transforming the singular authority of the writer and his signature unalterably.

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Maurice Blanchot, one of the most important voices in twentieth-century literature and thought, was a writer, critic, and journalist who had a major influence on thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, Nancy, and many others. Both his fiction and his criticism played a determining role in how postwar French philosophy was written, especially in its intense concern with the question of writing as such.

Never an academic, he published most of his critical work in periodicals and led a highly private life. Yet his writing included an often underestimated public and political dimension. Although over his lifetime his politics changed radically – from the far right to the far left, and then to the side of the far left – he remained constant in his rejection of party and in his affirmation of dissidence. 



“At a certain moment, when faced with public events, we know that we must refuse. Refusal is absolute, categorical. It does not discuss or voice its reasons. This is how it remains silent and solitary, even when it affirms itself, as it should, in broad daylight. Those who refuse and who are bound by the force of refusal know that they are not yet together. The time of common affirmation is precisely what has been taken away from them. What they are left with is the irreducible refusal, the friendship of this sure, unshakable, rigorous No that unites them and determines their solidarity.”

— Maurice Blanchot, “Refusal,” in Maurice Blanchot, Political Writings 1953-1993

These two weeks of podcasts finished the trans-disciplinarily conference and continued with talks by prominent transgender thinkers.

Patrice Maniglier’s response to Étienne Balibar’s talk on philosophical anthropology.

Étienne Balibar, “Anti-Humanism, and the Question of Philosophical Anthropology”

Peter Osborne’s introduction to “Transdisciplinary Problematics: Anti-humanism and Gender Study.”

In the early 19th century, Utopian Socialists envisaged a world free from sexual oppression, and set out to build communities where men and women would live as equals. 150 years later, at the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement, Barbara Taylor wrote a study of these radicals and their attempts to found a ‘New Moral World’ of class and gender equality. Her book, Eve and the New Jerusalem (Virago 1983), is republished in 2016. This event explores the utopian-feminist ideals described in Eve, and compares them to other feminist utopias, past and present.

Speakers: Professor Barbara Taylor (Queen Mary, University of London), Dr Shahidha Bari (Queen Mary University of London), Profesor Lynne Segal (Birkbeck, University of London) and Urvashi Butalia (Zubaan Books, Delhi). Chair: Dr Madeleine Davis (Queen Mary University of London).

Intro to session on Feminism and Radical Utopianism.

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I began the week by finishing the “Media After Kittler” conference, with three incredible talks and a discussion.

 The first talk was by Samuel Weber, a huge name in philosophy and friend of Kittler. His talk, titled “The Calculable and the Incalculable: Hölderlin after Kittler,” was a masterful demonstration of how Kittler’s materialism contaminates idealism.

 The second talk was Matthew Fuller’s “The Forbidden Pleasures of Media Determinism.” Fuller’s strong philosophical acumen is on display as he digs into important areas of media theory, such as a consideration of “social form determinism.”

 The third talk is by Mai Wegener, titled “The Humming of Machines. To the End of History and Back.” While many mentioned history in their Kittler talks, Wegener performs the most rigorous and systematic use of Kittler’s non-anthropocentric media philosophy to push concepts of history to their limit.

 I continued the week with one final session on German Media Studies. This session is from a different occasion than the “Media After Kittler” conference and surveyed a wider range of position. The breadth of the topic allowed each speaker to give really compelling talks. Groy’s short introduction was good at establishing key concepts. Engell and Seigert gave really sharp talks. Engell’s talk in particular is a model for drawing in an audience. Alliez completed the session with some characteristically thoughful interventions.

 I finished the week with a session by socialist feminists on Nancy Fraser’s recent book called The Fortunes of Feminism. Fraser’s argument is that second wave feminism’s liberation of women from the home unwittingly converged with key aspects of the neoliberal project, such as replacing welfare with work. Be sure to check out the discussion, which covered diverging opinions on intersectionality, the state, and international disruptions of how we define neoliberalism.

Subscribe to Interregnum at http://feeds.feedburner.com/AnarchistWithoutContent or on Apple iTunes at https://itun.es/us/axlweb.c.

Subscribe to Interregnum at http://feeds.feedburner.com/AnarchistWithoutContent or on Apple iTunes at https://itun.es/us/axlweb.c.

Subscribe to Interregnum at http://feeds.feedburner.com/AnarchistWithoutContent or on Apple iTunes at https://itun.es/us/axlweb.c.