What does it mean to come after Blanchot? Three things, at least. First, it is to recognise it is no longer possible to believe in an essentialist determination of literary discourse or of aesthetic experience. All this has disappeared; and there is no way back. Second, there is the question of history. What is Blanchot's legacy to us, his readers? Any name, however irreplaceably singular, is always already preceded, limited, challenged even, by the abiding anonymity of the person, animal, or thing it claims to name. Every name is necessarily impersonal, anonymous, other. Blanchot "after Blanchot," then, can best be understood in the sense of that which is "according to Blanchot" - and that is nothing other than the infinite process of reading and rereading Blanchot: without end. Here, a third meaning to the phrase "after Blanchot" comes into view. For if we come after Blanchot, it is surely because Blanchot is still before us, still in front, still in the future, still to come.
Blanchot's work makes demands. As demands they are not readily assimilable to the conventions of literary criticism and philosophy. Responding to Blanchot therefore is to allow for the possibility that his work will have a genuinely transformative effect. Novelty makes no demands. The exigency of a project that insists thus calling for a response has the capacity to refashion conventional modes of things. The papers included in this volume enact a complex of responses. Philosophers, literary critics and historians working with and through Blanchot transform their disciplines in the process. This is a book of immense value. Not only is Blanchot's work taken up at the highest level, but each of theseinvaluable papers envisages projects and thus future work of their own. They move beyond the platitudes of commentary by opening up new dimensions of critical inquiry.
