Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot (September 27, 1907-February 20, 2003) was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. His influence on later post-structuralist theorists such as Jacques Derrida is difficult to overestimate. It would be wrong to speak of Blanchot's work in terms of a coherent, all-encompassing 'theory', since it is a work founded on paradox and impossibility. If there is a thread running through all his writing, it is the constant engagement with the 'question of literature', a simultaneous enactment and interrogation of the profoundly strange experience of writing. For Blanchot, 'literature begins at the moment when literature becomes a question' (Literature and the Right to Death).

Principal works

• Thomas l'Obscur, 1941 (Thomas the Obscure: fiction)
• L'Arrêt de mort, 1948 (Death Sentence: fiction)
• La Part du feu, 1949 (The Work of Fire)
• L'Espace littéraire, 1955 (The Space of Literature)
• L'Entretien infini, 1969 (The Infinite Conversation)
• Le Pas au-delà, 1973 (The Step Not Beyond)
• L'Ecriture du désastre, 1980 (The Writing of the Disaster)
• (The Book to Come)
• (The Instant of My Death: Demeure: Fiction and Testimony)