Maurice Blanchot: Avant-garde icon or obscure authoritarian? How thirty years of controversy have stifled debate

Author(s)

  • Adrian May

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18352/relief.916

Keywords:

Maurice Blanchot, controversy, intellectual history, Lignes, la pensée 68

Abstract

Controversy has surrounded Maurice Blanchot from the 1980s to today. Whilst claims of excessive formalism, obscurity and radicalism were often levelled at his generation, the Blanchot controversy has been sustained by the failure of critics to dispassionately appraise his 1930s political commitments. However, recent interventions by Jean-Luc Nancy, Michel Surya and Lignes could end thirty years of stifled debate.

Author Biography

  • Adrian May

    Adrian May completed his doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge on the intellectual review Lignes in 2015. He is currently working on a new project using the magazine Art Press to undertake a cultural historical examination of the reaction of contemporary French artworks to the policies of fiscal austerity.

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Published

2015-12-17

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 2 (2015): Literary controversy

Section

Articles - thematic dossier

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Adrian May

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

All articles published in RELIEF appear in Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Under this licence, authors retain ownership of the copyright of their article, but they allow its unrestricted use, provided it is properly cited.

How to Cite

“Maurice Blanchot: Avant-garde icon or obscure authoritarian? How thirty years of controversy have stifled debate” (2015) RELIEF - REVUE ÉLECTRONIQUE DE LITTÉRATURE FRANÇAISE, 9(2), pp. 51–65. doi:10.18352/relief.916.