Foucault and Blanchot: a possible dialogue through worklessness and forgetfulness

Abstract

After an anylisis of the end of History of madness, we propose an interpretation of Blanchot’s article about it. Our aim is to examine a possible dialogue between them. We defend that the theme which might organize such a dialogue is that of forgetfulness and it’s relation with thought. The guiding question is the possibility of a tought that would march towards an active kind of forgetfulness, which isn’t just the result of memory’s fault. We defend the hypothesis that the blanchotian consideration on forgetfulness might help to understand that of ‘absence of work’ which appears in the end of History of madness ; even though blanchotian thought situated in a space of thought very different from that of Foucault, as the case of it’s concepts, methodology and objects. In the same way, this notion could reverberate more vastly in foucaultian works, even though it won’t be resumed after. We think that such a repercussion concern specially the question of the relation between Foucault’s own researches and the present itself ; and that the dialogue with Blanchot could help to think the critic of the present as an effort to actively forget the present and also oneself.