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Maurice Blanchot is a towering yet enigmatic figure in twentieth-century French thought. A lifelong friend of Levinas, he had a major influence on Foucault, Derrida, Nancy and many others. Both his fiction and his criticism played a determining role in how post-war French philosophy is 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 most private life. Yet his writing included an often underestimated public and political dimension. This posthumously published volume collects his political writings from 1953 to 1993, from the French-Algerian War and the mass movements of May 68 to post-war debates about the Shoah and beyond. A large part of the essays, letters, and fragments it contains were written anonymously and signed collectively, often in response to current events. The extensive editorial work done for the original French edition makes a major contribution to our understanding of Blanchot's work. Read together, these pieces form a testament to what political writing could be: not merely writing about the political or politicizing the written word, but unalterably transforming the singular authority of the writer and his signature. Intro -- contents -- translator's note -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Chronology -- Part I Le 14 juillet and the Revue internationale Project, 1953-1962 -- An Approach to Communism (Needs, Values) -- Refusal -- The Essential Perversion -- Declaration of the Right to Insubordination in the Algerian War -- Update -- [The Declaration of the Right to Insubordination that we have signed] -- [The Declaration . . . is not a protest manifesto] -- [For us, the first fact] -- [It is as a writer] -- [Interrogation with the judge] -- [Questioned by the judge] -- [First I would like to say] -- [Maurice Blanchot to Jean-Paul Sartre] -- Letters from the Revue internationale -- [The gravity of the project] -- The Course of the World -- The Conquest of Space -- Berlin -- Part II The Student-Writer Action Committee, the Review Comité, 1968 -- Tracts of the Student-Writer Action Committee (Sorbonne-Censier) -- [Letter to a representative of Yugoslav radio-television] -- Comité : The First Issue -- On the Movement -- Paranoia in Power -- Part III Interventions, 1970-1993 -- Refusing the Established Order -- Thinking the Apocalypse -- Do Not Forget -- Yes, Silence Is Necessary for Writing -- ''Factory-Excess,'' or Infinity in Pieces -- In the Night That Is Watched Over -- For Friendship -- Our Clandestine Companion -- The Ascendant Word -- or, Are We Still Worthy of Poetry? -- Encounters (On the Resistance and May 68) -- Peace, Peace Far and Near -- Letter to Blandine Jeanson -- Our Responsibility (On Nelson Mandela) -- What Is Closest to Me -- Writing Committed to Silence -- [I think it suits a writer better] -- [The Inquisition destroyed the Catholic religion] -- notes -- index of names.
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