Le moment révolutionnaire Sur la temporalité de la littérature chez Maurice Blanchot et Jean-Luc Nancy

One of the main topics in the works of Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy is what we may call the instant of literature. This literary instant in both authors is a revolutionary moment, not just because it interrupts and subverts the status quo, but also because it associates the literary and the political. For both, the revolutionary moment turns out to be a break with a temporality which may be said to be «mythological»: that of the future perfect. Literature creates what is rather an atemporal zero point «as if at the end of time» (Blanchot) or « subtracted from temporality » (Nancy), which interrupts this future perfect. However, this interruption is interpreted very differently by the two thinkers. Their difference of opinion arises from a disagreement about the ontological status of literature. While Nancy understands the revolutionary moment as the differential arch-dynamic of reality itself, Blanchot emphasizes that the revolutionary moment is revolutionary precisely because it brings about a spatio-temporal point that remains unreal.