Specters of fascism: Maurice Blanchot's Jew and the threat of theory

Abstract Maurice Blanchot's fascist affiliations in the 1930s have long cast doubt on the legacy of his conception of the Jew, which inverts anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jewish rootlessness to argue for literature as resistance to the state. The anxiety surrounding Blanchot's fascism, however, has not led to his dismissal from the canons of philosophy, but rather served to generate new specters of fascism that question not only his conception of the Jew, but the politics of philosophical critique more generally. Reading Blanchot's conception of Jewishness, literature, and critique in light of his earlier fascist writings, Jeffrey Mehlman and Bruno Chaouat pose it as a genealogical hinge that casts doubt on critique and postcolonial theory, aligning them with anti-Semitism. Returning to Blanchot's conception of writing, the Jew, and the state, this paper argues that the discourse surrounding fascism and Blanchot overstates the anti-Semitism of critique, and argues for a return to the questions about the relationship between philosophy and power that Blanchot posed regarding his own figure of the Jew.