Thinking Forgetting Through: Maurice Blanchot, for Example

Abstract

Much of Blanchot s thought seeks to undo the safe secure interiority of early Heidegger It takes the form of a radical nihilism open to the outside where a swatch of irredeemable negativity exposes language and being to a corrosive contaminant while effacing all transcendental signifieds The result is the impenitent-the forgetting that antedates all memory Yet the trace of the immemorial persists and persistently indicates the beyond being which is the sacred A light-hearted unconcern-a kind of reduction of ontic appropriativity-then constitutes a way to of the outside a non-place absolutely lacking in an inside Metaphorically the insouciance of casual reading rather than one that digs for the profundity offers access to an inaccessible text a text made inaccessible by the reach for meaning The sacrifice Blanchot has in mind in going beyond that of the object of thought requires a total rehabilitation of thinking Thought as forgetting becomes the dissembled auto-affection of the outside Such thinking bears the mark of a primordial affirmation the sacral Yes