'Everything and nothing' : Shakespeare in Blanchot

Abstract

This article discusses several moments in Maurice Blanchot’s work in which he delves into the space of Shakespeare’s oeuvre. For close contemporaries of Blanchot like Derrida and Levinas, Shakespeare is a decisive figure who inspires some of their major work. On the other hand, Shakespeare is not someone to whom Blanchot turns in decisive ways, except, perhaps, in a discussion of ‘Hamlet’ in The Space of Literature. The article discusses why Blanchot’s thinking may resist moving into the space of Shakespeare and proposes that, for Blanchot, Shakespeare’s name is inextricable from notions of human freedom and mastery that the modern work, which Blanchot is primarily interested in, dismisses. The (non-)relation with Shakespeare explored here reveals itself to be significant in what it discloses about Blanchot’s thought and the way he positions himself in relation to other writers.