Kojeve treats the intellectual as an animal because he lacks self-transcendence.
What the intellectual seeks to express is merely his
“talent” or his “nature, ” that which is given and which he has not
himself created. Thus the intellectual’s activity “alters nothing and
opposes nothing” ( Phenomenology, 23 7 ). Because he operates in a
purely literary mode, the individuality that expresses his talent does
not achieve any self-transcendence through a genuine and therefore
creative negation. The nature that is expressed remains a given, animal nature;
it is not dialectically transformed in the process of expression.
“The intellectual negates nothing; he therefore creates nothing, only
manifests his ‘nature’: he is a ‘spiritual’ animal [das geistige Teirreich]
” ( Kojeve, 93). Even more fundamentally, the intellectual is an
animal because his literary mode leaves him always short of the
struggle for recognition that is the constitutive moment of human, or
more precisely, for Kojeve, an thropogenic desire. As Michael Roth puts
it, the intellectual ” only speaks . . . [he] neither triumphs as a master
nor works as a slave” ( Roth, 1 06). He pretends to be disinterested and
only concerned with the impersonal purity of what Hegel calls “the
matter in hand” [ die Sache selbst] . He fails to insist on recognition, the
hallmark of human desire in Kojeve’s interpretation of Hegel. Rather
than forcing the others to recognize his value, the intellectual withdraws
into the posture of disinterestedness . This implies that there is
no such thing as an intellectuel engage, because the intellectual risks
nothing.
Both commitment and disinterestedness are moments of a
dialectic of deception and imposture. This point can also be expressed
by saying that there is nothing social in the action of the intellectual.
Hegel ends “The Spiritual Animal Kingdom” by emphasizing that
what is essential is the “action of each and everyone.” For Kojeve,
however, because the intellectual sidesteps the mediation of struggle
and labor, both of which necessarily involve a social dimension, the
universalization that he is engaged in is inevitably false. “The action of
the intellectual is purely thought: for him the Tun Aller und Jeder [sic],
collective action, means that his thought must become universal, universally
valid” (Kojeve, 94). This universalization is false not because of
its content, but because it is too immediate; it neglects to pass through
the action of the collectivity, to become effective ( wirklich ) in the
social life of a people, to engage in the struggle of history.
This analysis allows us to see what is most paradoxical in
Blanchot’s use of Kojeve. Blanchot rejects any opposition between literature
and action, any account of literature as a pure passivity. Against
Kojeve’s account of the animality of the intellectual, Blanchot deploys
Kojeve’s own definition of labor as an activity of transformation and
negation.
But what is a writer doing when he writes? Everything a man does when
he works, but to an outstanding degree. The writer, too, produces something –
a work in the highest sense of the word. He produces this work
by transforming natural and human realities . . . . In order to write, he must destroy
language in its present form and create it in another form . . . . [305/3 14]
This analysis of writing as labor – simultaneously transformation and
Negation – implies that there is no such thing as a “mere intellectual, “
or if there is, it would be one who does not write. The writer is not an
animal in Kojeve’s sense. Blanchot’s writer fundamentally chooses human
death over animal life. On the basis of this reversal, the rest of
Kojeve’s critique of the intellectual is accepted, or more precisely, assumed –
that is, it ceases to be a critique and becomes a positive characterization
of the literary project. Like the animal, the writer operates
in a domain of immediacy. He negates, but he negates too easily (no
matter how difficult it may be to write). His mode of negation sidesteps
empirical conditions and possibilities of realization and proceeds immediately
to “absolute freedom. “
Insofar as he immediately gives himself the freedom he does not have,
he is neglecting the actual conditions for his emancipation, he is neglecting
to do the real thing that must be done so that the abstract ideal
of freedom can be realized. His negation is global. This is why this
negation negates nothing, in the end, why the work in which it is
realized is not a truly negative, destructive act of transformation, but
rather the realization of the inability to negate anything. [306/3 1 5 ]
The labor involved in Blanchot’s literary freedom fails to create because
it is insufficiently destructive. The relations it entertains with
the world of productivity and politics – of determinate means and
ends – can only be based on a mutual misunderstanding. This misunderstanding
is indicated by the second half of the title of Hegel’s chapter,
“deceit, or the ‘matter in hand’ itself [ der Betrug oder die Sache
selbst] . ” Blanchot quite accurately summarizes the sense of this term
as “no longer the ephemeral work but something beyond that work :
the truth of the work” (300/308 ). Hegel’s characterization of die Sache
selbst appears as the unity of individual action and the objectivity that
the work gains from existing for other individualities; thus it stands
above the various moments that make the work something contingent
and ephemeral ( circumstances, means, reality), and therefore can be
taken to represent the higher purpose, the truth of which the work may
only be an imperfect realization. And in principle, this higher purpose
is what author and readers can agree on as genuinely important, as the
source of their interest in the work. Other individuals take an interest
in the work and ” disinterestedly” offer their opinions and their aid.
But this interest in the “matter in hand” displayed by all the individualities
is in fact merely a cover for their true interest in their own
action. While Hegel expressly qualifies this attitude as honesty or
integrity [Ehrlichkeit], it is clear that it is fundamentally an alibi. The
retreat into a consideration of one’s own action as the true matter at
hand, however, is equally deceptive, for the work continues to exist for
others . “It is, then, ” Hegel concludes, ” equally a deception of oneself
and of others if it is pretended that what one is concerned with is the
‘matter in hand’ alone ” ( Phenomenology, 25 1 ).
Blanchot gives a number of possible versions of the “matter in
hand” as higher purpose : art, the ideal, the world, values, authenticity,
etc. Even failure, silence, or nothingness can be figured as the essence
of literature and therefore as the truth behind the work. But the dialectic
of deception that takes place around this notion is best illustrated
by the example of engagement in a political ” Cause” (which is, moreover,
an excellent translation of Sache ) :
For example: [an author] writes novels, and these novels imply certain
political statements, so that he seems to side with a certain Cause.
Other people, people who directly support the Cause, are then inclined
to recognize him as one of themselves, to see his work as proof that the
Cause is really his cause, but as soon as they make this claim, as soon as
they try to become involved in this activity and take it over, they realize
that the writer is not on their side, that he is only on his own side, that
what interests him about the Cause is the operation he himself has
carried out-and they are puzzled. It is easy to understand why men
who have committed themselves to a party, who have made a decision,
distrust writers who share their views; because these writers have also
committed themselves to literature, and in the final analysis literature,
by its very activity, denies the substance of what it represents.
[30 1 /309- 1 0]
The writer cannot commit himself to a cause because the activity
through which this commitment would be expressed, namely literature,
nullifies any particular purpose it would represent.
On the basis of this passage, we can describe the central question of
the first half of the essay as a critique of Sartrean engagement in terms
of the negativity constitutive of literature.
“The right to death” therefore appears as a different relation to politics . This makes the section on the Revolution, in the middle of the essay, its culmination. For Blanchot, the relation between literature and politics – that is to say,
the question to which engagement is one possible response – cannot
be understood in immediately political terms. A relation can only be
established between these two terms by beginning with an understanding
of the character of the literary project as such.
We have seen that this project, for Blanchot, implies an immediate and total negation of the world as it is given to us. Therefore a commitment to a
particular political project, a Cause, is impossible for a writer as
writer: it is an act of imposture or bad faith, which is in fact perceived
as such by both writers and militants. This is true whatever the
writer ‘s political sympathies may happen to be.
There is, however, a political analogue to this immediate and total negation of the world, namely, the Revolutionary Terror. The writer ‘s relation to the Terror,
however, cannot be described in terms of commitment; rather, it appears
as an identification . The writer recognizes himself in the Terror.
This is no more a question of the individual writer ‘s particular
political sympathies than is the imposture of commitment. Instead,
this recognition is founded on the nature of the literary project as such
and the relation to politics that literature allows or indeed demands .
This is in fact the fundamental point of the example of Sade : despite his
noble family background and his attachment to the ways of the Ancien
Regime, despite his relatively humanitarian behavior in 1792-1794,
the fundamental meaning of his writing as writing is to be found in an
infinite movement of negation. Blanchot’s contemporaneous essay,
“La raison de Sade, ” ( 1 94 7 ) describes this movement of negation that
accepts no limit : if at a certain moment nature appears as a positive
name for the very movement of negation, and thus becomes the totality
that contains this movement and reconverts it into positivity, it
must be negated in its turn.22
This infinite movement of negation is also the essence of the Revolution,
which is the meaning of Hegel’s phrase, ” absolute freedom. “
There is no social reality that cannot be freely transformed. “At this
moment, ” writes Blanchot, “freedom aspires to be realized in the immediate form of everything is possible, everything can be done . ” It is
precisely this combination of immediacy and totality that makes the
Revolution a literary event. Reality no longer resists. It “sinks effortlessly,
without work, into nothingness . ” Everyone can propose his
or her own constitution, attempt to immediately universalize his or
her own consciousness as reality. The classic question of the relation
between literature and the Revolution concerns the “influence” of
Enlightenment thinking. Blanchot’s description of the Terror bypasses
this unresolvable question, and points to what is most fundamental
in Hegel’s analysis : the extent to which the Revolution, as
event, has the form of literature. The Revolution is a fabulation:
a new world, with new men and new laws. “The speech of fable
becomes action . . . . Revolutionary action explodes with the same
force and the same facility as the writer who has only to set down a
few words side by side in order to change the world” (309/3 1 8- 1 9).
It is therefore not so much that the writer identifies with the
Revolution – he does, but this is in fact secondary. The Revolution
realizes literature. B u t because it realizes literature, it is in fact completely
derealizing. It is in the Revolution as revolution, or more
precisely, as permanent insurrection, and not as the realization of
particular if universalistic values, that this literary ambition comes
to pass. The Revolution is not a state, but an infinite movement of
negation.23
Blanchot’s most direct and most important borrowing from Kojeve
is the title phrase, “the right to death. ” Kojeve had written, in one of his
most deliberately provocative formulations :
We have seen that death voluntarily confronted in a negating struggle is
Precisely the most authentic realization and manifestation of absolute
individual freedom. It is thus indeed in and by the Terror that this
freedom spreads throughout society, and it cannot be attained in a
“tolerant” state which does not take its citizens sufficiently seriously
to assure them of their political right to death. [Kojeve, 5 5 8 ]
The right to death is therefore something that must be claimed, and
that must be claimed precisely because it represents the highest fulfillment
of human (literary? ) freedom. The terrorist is one who has already
claimed his right to death, claimed it for himself before claiming
it also for others, and is therefore speaking as one already dead. The
frequent invocations made by Robespierre and Saint-Just ( as well as by
a score of less notorious orators of the period) of their impending deaths
are thus not ” mere ” (that is to say, dispensable) rhetorical flourishes.
They in fact define the lieu d ‘enonciation of their discourse, and the
possession of this rhetorical position is one of the major sources of
their political power. The terrorist speaks from beyond the grave, as
one who is already dead.
Robespierre’s virtue, Saint-Just’s relentlessness, are simply their existences
already suppressed, the anticipated presence of their deaths, the
decision to allow freedom to assert itself completely in them and
through its universality to negate the particular reality of their lives.
Granted, perhaps they caused the Reign of Terror to take place. But the
Terror they personify does not come from the death they inflict on
others but from the death they inflict on themselves . . . . the Terrorists
are those who desire absolute freedom and are fully conscious that this
constitutes a desire for their own death. [3 1 0/3 1 9-20]24
The Terror suppresses individuals, killing them off as if their particular
lives had no meaning. It is, indeed, because rather than in spite of this
fact, that the Terror is the fulfillment of humanity for Kojeve (Humanism
as Terror), just as, for Blanchot, it is the fulfillment of literature.
But an essential difference must be remarked here. Whereas for Kojeve
the historical function of the Terror is to prepare for the universal
(Napoleonic-Hegelian-Stalinist) state, in which humanity will be fully
satisfied and thus history at an end, for Blanchot what remains after
this moment is poetry. If prose is the most truly murderous form of
literature, poetry ‘s concern for what remains after this hecatomb is
inhuman, but perhaps thereby more humane. ” Ponge ‘s descriptions, “
writes Blanchot, “begin at that hypothetical moment after the world
has been achieved, history completed, nature almost made human,
when speech advances to meet the thing and the thing learns to speak . “
They express “not existence as it was before the day but existence as it
is after the day, the world of the end of the world” (323 /335 ). Literature,
Blanchot says in conclusion, is “the life which supports death and
maintains itself in it ” (330/343 ). But while this death may be what is
most human in the world, indeed “a power that humanizes nature”
(325 /33 7 ), the life that survives it is not our life. Literature is what
survives humanity.
For a historiographical interpretation of the Terror that reaches remarkably
similar conclusions, see Claude Lefort, “The Revolutionary Terror, ” in Democracy and Poli tical Theory, trans. David Macey (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press,(1 98 8 ), particularly 86- 8 7 : “The Terror is revolutionary in that it forbids anyone to occupy the place of power; and in that sense, it has a democratic character . . . . Robespierre was constantly obliged to cover up the paths that had brought him to power, but this was not because of some character trait; as we said above; it was because everyone who sought power was under an obligat ion to disappear as an individual . “
JAMES SWENSON
Revolutionary Sentences
Yale French Studies
NUMBER 93
The Place of Maurice Blanchot
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