In these two essays, two of the most important French thinkers of our time reflect on each other’s work. In so doing, novelist/essayist Maurice Blanchot and philosopher Michel Foucault develop a new perspective on the relationship between subjectivity, fiction, and the will to truth. The two texts present reflections on writing, language, and representation that question the status of the author/subject and explore the notion of a “neutral” voice that arises from the realm of the “outside.” This book is crucial not only to an understanding of these two thinkers, but also to any overview of recent French thought.
“In the first of this book’s two dense essays, Foucault links the neutral space of Blanchot’s fiction to a line of thought extending from Sade to Artaud, Nietzsche, and Bataille…. In the second essay, Blanchot mines Foucault’s excavation of the social practices underpinning prisons, the courts, and the medical establishment.” — Publishers Weekly
