Fear and Language

Today started my first reading of Maurice Blanchot and I could not help being reminded of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. Where Heidegger tries to build up the whole of reality out of being(s), Blanchot tries to get hold of literature through the investigation of its basic assumptions. And just like Heidegger you feel like there is a struggle going on with Language itself. How do you talk about literature if you are not really sure what literature is, where it really comes from and are still looking for its essential building blocks?

By doing this he shows once again how difficult these kinds of texts can get (cfr. Sein und Zeit). The premises seem so simple at the outstart, but, as Blanchot readily admits, it is remarkable how easily the handling of the most simple and basic concepts already leads to apparent paradoxes. You can't help of bringing to mind Derrida's "What deconstruction is not? Everything. What is deconstruction? Nothing!"

The parallel with postmodern society must be self-evident. It is like a nod that can never be untangled, because we have allowed too many factors into the game. Removing factors from the equation is no option either, the aporia will continue to exist. And now we must forever keep on playing, with not as much as a splinter of hope of ever finishing the game. We have definitely played ourselves.