Blanchot, Maurice (1907–2003)

Maurice Blanchot was a dominant voice in French philosophy and letters from the 1940s, initiating a postmodern discourse which has had a profound impact on Bataille, Levinas, Foucault and Derrida. His early writings, between 1930 and 1940, consisted of cultural and political criticism. The experience of the Second World War led him to disengage from politics and he became an essayist and novelist. His works have included novels, narratives, and criticism, notably. From the 1970s onwards he produced a series of fragmentary writings in which the line between literature and philosophy is shattered and, since the 1980s, meditations on language, death, the ‘disaster’ and community.