Blanchot by Hill Leslie;

Author:Hill, Leslie;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

4: The absence of the book

Beyond philosophy?

‘I reject these words with which you address me, this discourse into which you seek to entice me in such assuaging tones, and the duration of your words, one after the other, by which you delay me in the presence of an affirmation, and above all this relation you create between us by the simple fact of speaking to me even in my unresponsive silence.’ – ‘Who are you?’ – ‘The refusal to engage in discourse, to negotiate with the law of discourse.’ – ‘Do you prefer tears, laughter, the madness that does not move?’ –‘I speak, but I do not speak in your discourse: by speaking I prevent you from speaking, by not speaking I oblige you to speak; there is no recourse for you, no instant in which to rest from me, who am there in all your words before all your words.’ – ‘I invented the great logos of logic to protect me from your incursions and to allow me to say and know by saying, according to the peace of well-developed words.’ – ‘But, in your logic, I am there also, denouncing the oppression of a coherence that takes on the role of law and I am there with my violence, affirming itself beneath the mask of your legal violence, the sort that subjects thought to the grip of understanding.’ – ‘I invented poetic irregularity, the errancy of broken words, the interruption of signs, and forbidden images in order to put you into words and, by putting you into words, silence you.’ – ‘I am silent, and straight away, in the hollowing out of day and night, you can hear me, all you do is hear me, no longer hearing anything, then hearing everywhere the distant murmur that, with every simple word, the cries of torture, the sighs of happy people, the spinning of time, the disorientation of space, has now passed into the world in which I speak.’ – ‘I know that I am betraying you.’ – ‘You are not in a position to betray me, nor be faithful to me. I do not know faith, I am not the unspeakable demanding secrecy, the uncommunicable that muteness would make manifest, I am not even the violence without words against which you might defend yourself with the violence that speaks.’ – ‘Nonetheless, affirming when I deny, denying when I affirm, ravaging in an ever thoughtless act of wrenching separation: I denounce you as the word never uttered or still too many that aims to except me from the order of language and tempt me with another way of speaking. You torment me, it’s true, even by leaving me in peace, but I can torment you too: justice, truth, truth, justice, these terms you reject with your pre-emptive sneer pursue you in their turn even to the point of the other into which you reverse them. You do me Good by harassing me with the charge of injustice, and I might even say you are the Kindness that is never caught doing anything kind.

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