Maurice Blanchot

Elizabeth Rottenberg

This volume, a powerful short prose piece by Blanchot with an extended essay by Derrida, records a remarkable encounter in critical and philosophical thinking.

Demeure

Lily

Derrida musing extravagantly on a tiny [but poignant] story, the length of a few paragraphs. In Blanchot's story, the narrator recalls a young man nearly executed by a pillaging band of soldiers in the French countryside on the tail end of WWII. The young man is brought to the very brink of death, and then saved by the momentary dismissal of a soldier. What follows is a strange recounting of the emotional aftermath of such an experience, the "living on", as Derrida expressly focuses on. Despite the usual difficulty of following Derrida's prose, I found it quote enjoyable that he scrutinizes every single word Blanchot writes and opens up multiple rabbit holes, the most fascinating of which deals with the clashing of survivor's guilt and "justice", as well as the question that any reader of The Instant of My Death asks immediately: What even is this work? Is it a fictive story? A memoir? A semi-fictive memoir? No right or wrong answers here.

Demeure

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