Hill Leslie - Blanchot Extreme Contemporary

This book is the third, and final, volume in a series devoted to some of the most challenging areas in contemporary writing in French and essentially concerned with the relationship between the singularity of the proper name and the possibility of literature. Like its two predecessors, on Samuel Beckett and Marguerite Duras, this book has taken many years to finish, and there are many people, friends, colleagues, and others, to whom it owes a debt of some kind or other which it is not possible for me to repay except in words. For their assistance and support at different stages in the writing of this book, I should like therefore to record here my particular thanks to Andrew Benjamin, Geoffrey Bennington, Malcolm Bowie, Saskia Brown, Didier Cahen, Howard Caygill, David Constantine, Simon Critchley, Jonathan Derbyshire, Carolyn Gill, Darren Green, Michael Holland, Alan Jackson, Ian James, Ann Jefferson, Mig Kerr, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Roger Laporte, Peter Larkin, John Lechte, Dionys Mascolo, Philippe Mesnard, Jean-Luc Nancy, Tony Phelan, Douglas Smith, Simon Sparks, Richard Stamp, Chris Turner, and David Wood.

I am grateful to the University of Warwick for the granting of study leave and for the provision of funds that enabled me to carry out the research on which this book is based. I wish in addition to acknowledge further financial assistance from the British Academy during the spring of 1996. I must also thank the University of Nebraska Press, the University of Minnesota Press, the State University of New York Press, and Stanford University Press for permission to quote from copyright material. Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to Juliet, whose very existence is just about as much a surprise to me as the completion of this book.

Extracts from The Step Not Beyond, by Maurice Blanchot, translated by Lycette Nelson, reprinted by permission of the State University of New York Press.

Excerpts from The Work of Fire, by Maurice Blanchot, translated by Charlotte Mandell, reprinted with the permission of the publishers, Stanford University Press. Translation 1995 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Original edition 1949 by ditions Gallimard.

Extracts from The Space of Literature by Maurice Blanchot, translated, with an introduction, by Ann Smock, reprinted by permission of the University of Nebraska Press, ditions Gallimard, 1955. Introduction and English-language translation 1982 by the University of Nebraska Press.

Extracts from The Writing of the Disaster by Maurice Blanchot, translated by Ann Smock, reprinted by permission of the University of Nebraska Press, ditions Gallimard, 1980. Copyright 1986, 1995 by the University of Nebraska Press.

Extracts from The Infinite Conversation by Maurice Blanchot, translated by Susan Hanson, reprinted by permission of the University of Minnesota Press. English translation 1993 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota. Originally published as