Table Of ContentRadical Indecision
H
Barthes, Blanchot, Derrida,
i
Radical
l
and the Future of Criticism
l
Leslie Hill
Indecision
“Radical Indecision offers vivid and compelling original readings of
Barthes, Blanchot, and Derrida. Leslie Hill provides much more than R
another guide to three major theoreticians. He makes concrete sense of
Derrida’s concept of the undecidable and of a ‘justice to come’ in the field
a
of literary studies. This outstanding book is the work of a seasoned com-
mentator who has gained international visibility through his canonical d Barthes, Blanchot,
books on Beckett and Blanchot, who is a major player in the fields of
deconstruction and literary phenomenology.”
i
Derrida, and the
—Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania c
“Leslie Hill confronts us once again here with the event of literature, so a
abrupt and unmistakable that it leaves us completely at a loss as to what Future of Criticism
it is we have yet to encounter. Only a scholar as learned and exacting as l
Hill could remind us so well of this devastating experience of indeci-
I
sion, and of its baffling demand.”
—Ann Smock, University of California, Berkeley n
“Leslie Hill argues for a response to writing that does justice to its singu-
d
larity and otherness, and his superb readings of Barthes, Blanchot, and
Derrida exemplify just such a response. The understanding of literature
e
that emerges from his meticulous accounts of these writers in their
intellectual contexts is one that grants it importance precisely because it c
cannot be evaluated according to existing norms. The literary work both
i
invokes the laws according to which it must be read and suspends those
s
laws in an opening toward the future; Hill’s ‘indecisive’ readings trace
both the operation and the suspension of the laws of literature and literary i
criticism in wonderfully detailed engagements with his three subjects.” o
—Derek Attridge, University of York
n
LESLIE HILL is professor of French studies at the University of Warwick.
Among his many publications are The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques
Derrida and Blanchot: Extreme Contemporary.
University of Notre Dame Press ISBN-13:978-0-268-03107-7
ISBN-10:0-268-03107-X leslie Hill
Notre Dame, IN 46556 9 0 0 0 0
undpress.nd.edu
Cover design by James F. Brisson 9 78026 8 031077
Hill_Cover.indd 1 11/10/09 10:19:31 AM
Radical I i
NDEC SION
Radica l I i
NDEC SION
Barthes,
Blanchot,
Derrida,
and the Future of Criticism
L E S L I E H I L L
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2010 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hill, Leslie, 1949–
Radical indecision : Barthes, Blanchot, Derrida, and the future of
criticism / Leslie Hill.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-268-03107-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-268-03107-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Criticism—History—20th century. 2. Criticism (Philosophy)
3. Literature—Philosophy. 4. Literature—History and
criticism—Theory, etc. 5. Philosophy, French—20th century.
6. Barthes, Roland—Criticism and interpretation.
7. Blanchot, Maurice—Criticism and interpretation.
8. Derrida, Jacques—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
PN94.H56 2009
801'.950904—dc22
2009041713
This book is printed on recycled paper.
The complaint is sometimes made that criticism is no longer capable of
judging. But why is this? It is not criticism which out of sheer laziness
cannot be bothered to evaluate, but the novel or poem that eschews
evaluation because what it seeks is to affi rm itself in isolation from all
value. And in so far as criticism belongs more intimately to the life of
the work, it experiences the work as something that cannot be evaluated,
apprehending it as the depth, but also the absence of depth, that escapes
each and every system of values, being prior to whatever has value and
disqualifying in advance any assertion that would take hold of it to
invest it with value. In this sense, criticism—literature—in my view is
part of one of the most challenging yet important tasks of our time,
unfolding in a movement that is necessarily undecided: the task of
preserving and releasing thought from the notion of value, and
consequently opening history to that which within history is already
moving beyond all forms of value and readying itself for a wholly
different—and still unpredictable—kind of affi rmation.
Maurice Blanchot, “Qu’en est-il de la critique?”
(The Task of Criticism Today)
C
ONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Preface xi
Chapter One
Instantiations 1
Chapter Two
Roland Barthes: From Ideology to Event 71
Chapter Three
Maurice Blanchot: The Demand of the Unreadable 154
Chapter Four
Jacques Derrida: Addressing the Future 233
Chapter Five
Radical Indecision 333
Notes 337
Index 432
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to thank the numerous friends, colleagues, and students
who, often without realising, have contributed to this book in many dif-
ferent ways. I am particularly indebted to Kevin Hart for his encourage-
ment and generosity, to Andrew Benjamin for his unfailing support,
to Christophe Bident for his friendship, to Barbara Hanrahan for her
belief in this project, and to Linda Paterson who fi rst asked the ques-
tion. Juliet, Melanie, Mig, and Susie also helped in more ways than I
have space to mention. I am also grateful to the University of Warwick
and to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for the pro-
vision of study leave that enabled me to complete what became a sig-
nifi cantly longer book than I fi rst envisaged. But such is the fate, I
eventually learned, that befalls anyone who, gambling on the future,
dallies with indecision.
Portions of this book have appeared elsewhere, and I am grateful
for permission to use them again here. Part of chapter 1 was published
as “‘Affi rmation without precedent’: Maurice Blanchot and Criticism
Today,” in After Blanchot: Literature, Philosophy, Criticism, ed. Leslie
Hill, Brian Nelson, and Dimitris Vardoulakis (Newark: University of
Delaware Press, 2005); and passages from chapter 3 were incorporated
into my “‘Distrust of Poetry’: Levinas, Blanchot, Celan,” MLN 120, no. 5
(Winter 2005): 986–1008, copyright © The Johns Hopkins University
Press, reprinted with permission.
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