Sunday, January 15, 2006

Blanchot and Writing

What is new with Blanchot’s writings? One of his important writings on which we can initiate this discussion is his short narrative, La folie du jour. I have read it in English, a translation by Lydia Davis. “Can such a story be narrated anywhere else other than in writing?” – this was my immediate response. Before reading it in full I had read a paper by Derrida in Acts of Literatrue. The paper was titled, Law of Genre. Derrida actually does a deconstruction of this story in order to state his point. Nothing but the text speaks in La folie du jour. And hence it was quite possible to find out how literature actually functions in tandem with the rules set by the discourse on literature as well as the rules set by the author. One needs to read this one story alone to understand many of the arguments put forward by Derrida in his texts.

Other blogs and sites of interest on Blanchot:


Long Sunday

No comments: