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Ending and Unending Agony

On Maurice Blanchot

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Translated by Hannes Opelz

"Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, writer, thinker, translator and interpreter of Holderlin, Heidegger, and Benjamin, was also one of Maurice Blanchot's most constant, scrupulous, and uncompromising readers. In this book on death's interruptions, itself interrupted by death, he provides an incisive, rigorous, and illuminating account of the work of one of the twentieth-century's most incisive, rigorous, and illuminating thinkers. It is powerful testimony to the enduring contemporaneity of an unending dialogue exploring with remarkable originality the possibilities and impossibilities of writing and its critical relationship with literature, philosophy, and politics."—Leslie Hill, University of Warwick

“As it makes its way, in a manner that is painstakingly attentive and demanding, through two texts by Maurice Blanchot (The Instant of My Death and "(A Primal Scene?)" ), Ending and Unending Agony explores the relationship between dying and writing : Does not each hold the truth of the other as they relate to the immemorial? That which never took place and of which there is neither memory nor forgetting is also that which binds us to the extremity of sense, where sense renders itself absent. What is at stake as this limit is reached? Can one speak of myth—something Blanchot had ruled out long ago—or rather of an experience which no one can experience but which nevertheless leaves a trace? Such are some of the questions to which English-speaking audiences may now direct their attention thanks to this translation of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's book on Blanchot."—Jean-Luc Nancy, Universite Marc Bloch, Strasbourg

Published posthumously, Ending and Unending Agony is Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's only book entirely devoted to the French writer and essayist Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003). The place of Blanchot in Lacoue-Labarthe's thought was both discreet and profound, involving difficult, agonizing questions about the status of literature, with vast political and ethical stakes. Together with Plato, Holderlin, Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Heidegger, Blanchot represents a decisive crossroads for Lacoue-Labarthe's central concerns. In this book, they converge on the question of literature, and in particular of literature as the question of myth—in this instance, the myth of the writer born of the autobiographical experience of death. However, the issues at stake in this encounter are not merely autobiographical; they entail a relentless struggle with processes of figuration and mythicization inherited from the age-old concept of mimesis that permeates Western literature and culture. As this volume demonstrates, the originality of Blanchot's thought lies in its problematic but obstinate deconstruction of precisely such processes. In addition to offering unique, challenging readings of Blanchot's writings, setting them among those of Montaigne, Rousseau, Freud, Winnicott, Artaud, Bataille, Lacan, Malraux, Leclaire, Derrida, and others, this book offers fresh insights into two crucial twentieth-century thinkers and a new perspective on contemporary debates in European thought, criticism, and aesthetics.

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe was Professor of Philosophy at the Universite Marc Bloch, Strasbourg. His many books include Poetry as Experience; Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics; and, with Jean Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism.

Hannes Opelz is Assistant Professor in the French Department at Trinity College, Dublin. He is the co-editor of Blanchot Romantique.

Fordham University Press

July 2015 192pp 9780823264582 Paperback ~~£16.99~~ now only £13.59* when you quote CSL715PHIL when you order

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/ending-and-unending-agony

Negative Ecstasies

Georges Bataille and the Study of Religion

Edited by Jeremy Biles & Kent Brintnall

"This collection makes a significant and timely contribution to the still emergent scholarship on Georges Bataille. The authors have not given in to the temptation to tame the texts, but neither is this an uncritical celebration; rather, the consistently thoughtful essays take up Bataille's work seriously and carefully in a range of new approaches and ideas."—Karmen MacKendrick, Le Moyne College

"Negative Ecstacies provides a welcome appraisal of Bataille's contribution to religious thought and experience in a post-sacred society. With scholarly rigor, this impressive collection extends his provocative ideas to daringly new terrain."—Michelle Richman, University of Pennsylvania

Despite Georges Bataille's acknowledged influence on major poststructuralist thinkers-including Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Barthes-and his prominence in literary, cultural, and social theory, rarely has he been taken up by scholars of religion, even as issues of the sacred were central to his thinking. Bringing together established scholars and emerging voices, Negative Ecstasies engages Bataille from the perspective of religious studies and theology, forging links with feminist and queer theory, economics, secularism, psychoanalysis, fat studies, and ethics. As these essays demonstrate, Bataille's work bears significance to contemporary questions in the academy and vital issues in the world. We continue to ignore him at our peril.

Jeremy Biles is the author of Ecce Monstrum: Georges Bataille and the Sacrifice of Form (Fordham).

Kent L. Brintnall is the Bonnie E. Cone Early-Career Professor in Teaching at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of Ecce Homo: The Male-Body-in-Pain as Redemptive Figure.

Fordham University Press

July 2015 304pp 9780823265206 Paperback ~~£21.99~~ now only £17.59* when you quote CSL715PHIL when you order

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/negative-ecstasies

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