Maurice Blanchot: The Space of Literature (1955–) [FR, EN, CZ, ES, RU]

Maurice Blanchot, the eminent literary and cultural critic, has had a vast influence on contemporary French writers—among them Jean Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. From the 1930s through the present day, his writings have been shaping the international literary consciousness.

The Space of Literature, first published in France in 1955, is central to the development of Blanchot’s thought. In it he reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention. Thus he explores the process of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the relation of the literary work to time, to history, and to death. This book consists not so much in the application of a critical method or the demonstration of a theory of literature as in a patiently deliberate meditation upon the literary experience, informed most notably by studies of Mallarmé, Kafka, Rilke, and Hölderlin. Blanchot’s discussions of those writers are among the finest in any language.

L’espace littéraire
Publisher Gallimard, Paris, 1955
ISBN 2070324753
295 pages

English edition
Translated, with an Introduction, by Ann Smock
Publisher University of Nebraska Press, 1983
ISBN 080321166X
280 pages

publisher (EN)
google books (EN)

L’espace littéraire (French, 1955, no OCR)
The Space of Literature (English, trans. Ann Smock, 1983)
Literární prostor (Czech, trans. Marie Kohoutová and Michal Pacvoň, 1999)
Le Espacio Literario (Spanish, trans. Vicky Palant and Jorge Jinkis, 2002, no OCR)
Prostranstvo literatury (Russian, trans. V.P. Bolshakov, et al., 2002, added 2014-12-6)

Michel Foucault: This Is Not a Pipe (1973–) [ES, EN, PT, SK, RU]

“What does it mean to write ‘This is not a pipe’ across a bluntly literal painting of a pipe? René Magritte’s famous canvas provides the starting point for a delightful homage by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Much better known for his incisive and mordant explorations of power and social exclusion, Foucault here assumes a more playful stance. By exploring the nuances and ambiguities of Magritte’s visual critique of language, he finds the painter less removed than previously thought from the pioneers of modern abstraction.”

Originally published in French as Ceci n’est pas une pipe, Fata Morgana, Montpellier, 1973

English edition
Translated and Edited by James Harkness
With Illustrations and Letters by Rene Magritte
Publisher University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1983
ISBN 0520042328, 9780520042322
66 pages

Review (Marcel Chabot)

Publisher (EN)

Esto no es una pipa (Spanish, trans. Francisco Monge, 4th ed., 1981/1997, updated on 2014-6-6)
This Is Not a Pipe (English, trans. James Harkness, 1983, updated on 2014-7-4)
Isto não é um cachimbo (Portuguese, trans. Jorge Coli, 5th ed., 1988/2008, added on 2014-2-24)
Toto nie je fajka (Slovak, trans. Miroslav Marcelli, 1994, no OCR)
Eto ne trubka (Russian, trans. Irina Kulik, 1999, added on 2014-6-6)

Jean Baudrillard: Seduction (1979-) [ES, EN, CZ, PL]

“Seduction, in French thinker Baudrillard’s apocalyptic discourse, is a power of attraction and fascination capable of subverting mechanical, orgasm-centered sexuality and reality in general. Two chief obstacles to unleashing the potentially liberating forces of seduction are the women’s movement and psychoanalysis, charges the author of America and Forget Foucault. While recognizing that seduction has a negative side–turning the seduced person away from his/her true thoughts and impulses–Baudrillard is intrigued by the seductive processes at work in the vertigo induced by games, in magic and the lottery, in the transvestite’s “total gestural, sensual and ritual” behavior. He decodes pornography as “an orgy of realism,” a hyperreality of signs. In his analysis, seduction has itself been corrupted in a world of manufactured desires and ready-made satisfactions. With seductive irony, Baudrillard storms the fragile phallic fortress of patriarchy in this heady, sometimes obscure meditation.”

Originally published in French as De la seduction by Editions Galilee, 1979
Translated to English by Brian Singer
Publisher New World Perspectives, 1991
CultureTexts series
ISBN 092039325X
182 pages
for gnd

google books (English)

PDF (Spanish, trans. Elena Benarroch, 1981)
PDF (English, trans. Brian Singer, 1991)
PDF (Czech, trans. Alena Dvořáčková, 1996)
PDF (Polish, trans. Janusz Margański, 2005, updated on 2016-10-28)