The (Im)Possible Story: ”La folie du jour” and the Secret Law of the Story

  • Nemanja Mitrović The European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland
Keywords: story, presence, Maurice Blanchot, interpretation, Jacques Derrida

Abstract

Narrativization and demand for story can be described as basic features of our culture. Stories make sense of our experience and with their help our world becomes endowed with meaning. This is why we can say that narrative knowledge is a basic form of our knowledge. However, what if narrativization rests upon a fundamental paradox: on the attempt to narrate about something that escapes any attempt of narrativization? What if the basis of a story is some fundamental impossibility? In this text, I will try to describe this paradox that lies in the heart of every narration with the help of Blanchot’s story La folie du jour and with something that he describes as the secret law of the story.

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Published
2024-02-01
Section
Studies, Essays, Contributions