Timing Blanchot – Symposium

Organized by Denis Hollier and Zakir Paul

In Fall 2018, Fordham University Press will publish Maurice Blanchot: A Critical Biography, a translation of Christophe Bident’s groundbreaking life of the writer and critic, as well as Death Now, the final volume of of Blanchot’s Chronicles of Intellectual Life, written from 1941-1944. Finally, Minuit has recently published Jean-François Hamel’s, Nous sommes tous la pègre (Les années 68 de Blanchot), an essay based on archival research into Blanchot’s involvement with the political tracts and events of May ’68, alongside Mascolo, Duras, Antelme, and many others. Spurred by these recent publications, this symposium focuses on Blanchot’s writing from the thirties to the sixties and beyond, offering an occasion to reconsider not only his often-contested political trajectory from the non-conformist extreme right to the radical left, but also the evolving concerns of his literary and critical works.

9:40 a.m.  Introductory Remarks
Denis Hollier (NYU)

9:45 a.m.  Preoccupied: Blanchot in the Thirties
Zakir Paul (NYU)

10:30 a.m.  Literature and the Right to Err
Denis Hollier (NYU)

11:15 a.m.  À la vérité, depuis Mai. Maurice Blanchot et le Comité d’action étudiants-écrivains (1968-1969)
Jean-François Hamel (Université du Québec à Montréal)

1:45 p.m.  Blanchot’s Experience: Jewish Diaspora, Exile, and Désœuvrement in Literary Space
Michael Krimper (NYU)

2:30 p.m.  When Curfews Sound: Deviation, Error and the Times of Survival
Nasrin Qader (Northwestern)

3:15 p.m.  Politics of the Image: Godard’s Debt to Blanchot
Anne-Gaëlle Saliot (Duke University)

4:30 p.m.  Keynote: Staging a Life 
Christophe Bident (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne)

Presentations in English or in French

Co-sponsored by the Department of French Literature, Thought, and Culture, the Department of Comparative Literature, and the Advanced Certificate Program in Poetics and Theory

From La Maison Française NYU