Blanchot, Maurice

« the danger of totalitarianism is that all negativity or independent action will be appropriated by the state, all opposition recuperated, all criticism absorbed.

His fear, expressed in L'Écriture du désastre (1980) ( The Writing of the Disaster , 1986), is that the totalization of the state in modernity will lead to a world in which 'the prisoners construct their prison themselves' ( [1980] 1986: 45 ).

The disaster, as Blanchot conceives it, is encapsulated by the totalitarian state, with its camps, in which what takes place is 'dying, as forgetfulness of death' ( [1980] 1986:17 ). So powerful is the presence of the Holocaust, and its death camps, that Blanchot designates it 'the absolute event of history' ( [1980] 1986: 47 ). Yet in the face of the disaster, Blanchot sees humankind's search for community.

Community appears in two forms in Blanchot's thinking.

In the 1930s, in his earliest writings, his views were shaped by the extreme right-wing Action Française , to which he was then linked.

At that time 'community' meant an organic community, based on rootedness in a common place, a native soil, and ethnicity.

The experience of Nazi barbarism and occupation led him to reject any conception of a traditional community, opening the way to his thematization of l'autrui , the other, as a basis of his thinking.

Here, we can see the profound influence of his friend Emmanuel Levinas .

As the antithesis of totality, and identity, as the embodiment of l'autrui , the Jew becomes the point of departure for a different vision of community.

This Blanchotian vision, articulated in La Communauté inavouable (1983b) ( The Unavowable Community , 1988) is an elective community based on friendship and open to alterity, in which the other is no longer despised, and execrated; a community in which l'autrui is an irreducible element.

In contrast to the traditional communities imposed on humans by virtue of blood or race, such an elective community would gather its members around a choice, 'that gave permission to everyone, without distinction of class, age, sex or culture, to mix with the first comer as if with an already loved being, precisely because he was the unknown-familiar' ( [1983b] 1988: 30 ). Blanchot's daring linkage of the dangers of the totalizing state, and the disaster which confronts humankind, as well as the need for a community in which l'autrui is at home, to the experience of the Holocaust, and its death camps, make his a seminal voice in postmodern thinking.. »