Art and Technology in Maurice Blanchot

Langstaff offers a full reappraisal of Blanchot’s writing and his profound critical engagement with Martin Heidegger, specifically around the question of technology and its relation to art. She admirably and persuasively demonstrates that Blanchot’s engagement with technology is decisive throughout his career and fundamentally related to his understanding of literature. * Ian James, University of Cambridge *
Maurice Blanchot is well-known for his principled refusal of mastery, power, and technique; until now, however, he has not been well-known for thinking of writing as “disobedient technology.” Holly Langstaff’s argument, along with her subtle readings of Blanchot’s texts, and her awareness of the cultural politics of teknē, give us a new and unexpected perspective on this increasingly inescapable author. * Kevin Hart, University of Virginia *
Langstaff shows the complex relationship not only between technology and nature, but also between techne and the human, especially when writing is in play: ‘In its excess the fragmentary is that techne that outplays the human; it shows that the end does not always imply a new beginning but a suspended moment where nothing is final’ (p. 167). This is a radically affirmative interruption, which opens onto something beyond technology. * Bryan Counter, Western New England University *

Holly Langstaff is a Lecturer in French at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. She researches and teaches modern and contemporary French literature and thought. She runs the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

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