An undecidable discourse of the self, between fiction and testimony: regarding Derrida’s reading of Blanchot

Abstract

In Derrida’s literary readings the thought “suffers” from the stylistic alterities and detours. In consequence, the philosopher seems particularly concerned with L’instant de ma mort, Blanchot’s elliptical narrative that relies on the untranslatable testimony about a (non)experience one cannot claim as one’s own. The truthful testimony, haunted by a literary fiction – in which Derrida calls “the passionate place of literary writing” –, implies some breaking of the rules of autobiographical attestation. The requirement of truthfulness, honesty or objectivity of the authorial voice appears subjected to a disturbing complicity between fiction and testimony. This paper examines in Demeure (1998) Derrida’s hermeneutical examination of what is beyond confession in Blanchot’s discourse of the self; it thereby intends to point out some events of aphasia on autobiographical voice.