Fragments On Maurice Blanchot & The Malady of Death (pt 2)
What follow are two fragments from my Bachelor’s Thesis entitled Jean-Luc Nancy: L’aveu de l’inavouable (The Avowal of the Unavowable). The first of these fragments was ultimately scrapped from the final thesis as it feels a touch too reductive in its explanation of Blanchot’s theory. However, I find it will serve well here to provide a brief understanding of Duras’ novella The Malady of Death (La maladie de la mort) as well as Blanchot’s thinking of love.
Fragment 1: Blanchot on Love
Marguerite Duras’ The Malady of Death is a tiny, yet profound book about an unnamed man who pays an also unnamed woman to spend the weekend with him enclosed in his room. Over the course of these few days, which pass seamlessly, there are no interludes of showers or meals, but only time in bed. At the outset of the story, the Man believes he is free from love as he has never sought love and has never felt it either. And yet, he seeks out this woman, to be all alone with her for multiple days and pays her for her time. It is clear that he longs for love, but cannot seek it without the protective veil of a contract. In the case of the Woman, she is very absently present according to Blanchot. For instance, she is nearly always naked and asleep — routinely watched by the Man who almost worships her in her state of fragility; naked and asleep, yet still inaccessible — and often, asks Him questions and imparts judgement on his state of being somehow still while asleep. Within this state of slumber, thus, She is in a constant flow between being the judger and being sexually objectified.
Blanchot regards the Malady of Death very highly in that it encompasses much of what he aims to convey on the subject of an unavowable community. In regards to the contract/payment for time, as illustrated in Duras’ story, Blanchot notes the important (yet often overlooked) fact that the Woman is not a prostitute, but rather that She accepts the man’s proposal “because she has felt from the beginning, without knowing it clearly, that, incapable of loving, he can only approach her conditionally,” (Unavowable Community 35). Moreover, not only is the Man closed off to the concept of exposing himself to another, but the Woman, too, is closed off, although in a different — almost opposite — manner. Blanchot explains this as “presence-absence” (UC 38). In her constant sleep, she “prevents one from knowing anything about her” (UC 38) and is thus “forever separate because of the suspect closeness with which she offers herself, her difference which is that of another species (…) that of the absolutely other,” (UC 38). But, there’s more to it than just that, this story may not seem to be one of love as the two are so distant from one another — never in the same state: the Woman always passive, and the Man always active — but there is something to be said about their mutual experience of solitude. (To be clear, the Woman is active in and through her passivity whilst the Man is passive in his activity — don’t let your mind take this theory down the rabbit hole of misogyny)
The Woman — in her presence-absence — serves as a messenger, an oracle for the Man. She reveals to him that He is ailed by what is called the malady of death: “…you don’t understand the malady you suffer from. (…) You think you weep because you can’t love. You weep because you can’t impose death,” she says to him (Malady of Death 45–46). Thus, Blanchot explains that “the ‘malady of death’ is no longer the sole responsibility of the one — the man — who ignores the feminine, or, even knowing it, does not know it. The malady foments itself also (or first) in her who is present and who decrees it by her existence” (UC 38–39).
Quick sidenote! Here, this fragment becomes a bit more of an inner dialogue — questions and answers to further my point. Ok! As you were..
Thus, begs the question, is his malady — or even the diagnosis itself — contingent upon his attempt to break free of said malady by spending time with this woman? (yes, I believe so, because he has never really encountered a woman. But, because he seeks out her love by means of a contract, his attempt at such intimacy failed before it even began [UC 53] )
Then — considering that the malady is transposed into his life as a ceaseless feeling of solitude — does this woman, in her diagnosis of him and her choice to posit herself in a state of presence-absence in his room, forge a sense of solitude for her, too? (yes)
And, lastly, does their mutual experience of solitude in each others’ company somehow bind them together? (yes, they forge a community which cannot be avowed; because of its impossibility)
Blanchot elucidates this on page 25 of The Unavowable Community:
And thus, when their time is up and she, without any goodbye, finally leaves him to his own solitude. Their ‘community’ is dissolved and gives off “the impression of never having been able to exist” (UC 53) due to his malady and her presence-absence. In any event, they experienced their own respective solitudes together, and this community did exist. And, that, in its own sinuous way, is love.
The following fragment did make it into the thesis’ final form and, instead of diving into Blanchot’s thoughts on Duras’ The Malady of Death like Fragment 1, it takes to questions of what makes love an unavowable community.
As in part 1 of this series on Love, I will be using footnotes — noted as such: (1) — that will be presented at the closure of this post.
Fragment 2: On Blanchot’s The Community of Lovers (La communauté des amants)
Blanchot takes to relationality and its effect on pairs of lovers, among other forms of intimacy, in The Unavowable Community. Throughout this piece, Blanchot touches on topics of love, its expression, its nature, and its triumph. Notably, he explains that love, when experienced, is imbued with the subtle, yet towering sense that it is “always under the prior threat of disappearance” (Blanchot 25). Illustrated in this way, this understanding may sound foreign to many. And yet, it stands as a fundamental element of the finite human’s experience (1). In The Unavowable Community, Blanchot explains love as synonymous with — that is to say, a manifestation of — what he calls “the community of lovers.” Further, he articulates this polynomial concept (2) within the realm of an intimate relationship: “[…] two beings try to unite only to live (and in a certain way to celebrate) the failure that constitutes the truth of what would be their perfect union, the lie of that union which always takes place by not taking place.” He then proceeds to ask the question, “Do they, in spite of all that, form some kind of community?” only to sustain that “It is rather because of that [and not in spite of it] that they form a community” (Blanchot 49). In this description, Blanchot refers to the perfect, the ideal, union which the lovers may seek in their coming together. Nonetheless, he argues, this idea of a “perfect union” is only constituted by its prior failure — that is to say that, despite our efforts to experience/embody this union, there is no such thing. In an effort to emphatically reiterate this idea, he proceeds to deem this ideal union a “lie” since the experience (of what may only be a semblance or image of this “perfect union”) is made possible because it is impossible. He then calls us to question if these lovers, in defiance of their perfect union’s impossibility, foment their experience of community. Blanchot concludes that this experience is not “in spite of” this impossibility; but, instead, that it is this impossibility that constitutes a possibility for community. Moreover, this is why Blanchot often refers to (the) community (of lovers) as the negative, or unavowable, community, since it is only possible through its impossibility and is thereby impossible to certifiably avow or name as manifest, but rather is only experienced.
Within the second part of The Unavowable Community, entitled “The Community of Lovers,” Blanchot displays the negative community by virtue of love’s inherent essence of atopos. The term atopos may not often be used by Blanchot; however, its definition remains compatible with his theory of the negative community. Atopic love, in this regard, represents an intimate relationship between two people, played out within the same schema used to explain the impossible possibility of the negative community. Moreover, the atopic lovers, by definition, remain in a state of solitude and are dispossessed of any traditional relationship structures (i.e. monogamy and/or marriage). And yet, they are left with an impossible, yet possible chance for intimacy in their shared solitude: “[…] How not to search that space where, for a time span lasting from dusk to dawn, two beings have no other reason to exist than to expose themselves totally to each other […] so that their common solitude may appear not in front of their own eyes but in front of ours, yes, how not to look there and how not to rediscover ‘the negative community, the community of those who have no community’?” (Blanchot 49–50).
Footnotes:
(1) Let’s take to a simpler, more common, example of this to understand what Blanchot asserts here: Imagine watching your favorite music artist play your favorite song live. You feel the bassline vibrate through your bones and, soon enough, goosebumps wash over your skin. You stand there, listening intently, wishing this song would never come to a close. You wish they would keep playing it, over and over and over, so that you may continue to cherish this feeling forever. However, no matter how strongly you wish for this, the song will have to end and, consequently, that feeling will end, too. If it didn’t, the singer’s voice would soon grow coarse, the band might start making mistakes, or you’d have to return home and go on with your life in compliance with your obligations. Thus, every moment we experience — whether we are entranced by it in this way or not — is fleeting. Therefore, every moment is “always under the prior threat of disappearance.”
(2) Referred to as The Negative Community; Love; Atopos; The Unavowable Community; & so many more.
As usual, if there is any interest, linked here is the Works Cited page for the thesis this is excerpted from.
And here I will leave you with a fun quote from Edward Young I once saw engraved in the walls of the Parisian Catacombs:
For some reason, almost every time I’ve read it out loud, I’ve said l’amour (love) in place of la Mort (death). Hope y’all enjoy that one.
