Toward an Aesthetics of Anomie in Maurice Blanchot and Henri Michaux

The period from the 1950s to the 1970s was marked by numerous upheavals, fractures, and ideological and intellectual renewals in the wake of World War II and the historical events associated with it: the rise of dictatorships, genocidal phenomena, and a crisis of civilization. Literature, in its own way, implicitly and symptomatically reflected these events by questioning them. Thus, other modes of writing and often radical modes of thought were made possible. In France, authors such as Beckett, Blanchot, Camus, Du Bouchet, Duras, Genet, Robbe-Grillet, and Sollers—to name but a few—contributed to this rupture and radicalism. My critical approach, which aims to be multidisciplinary (combining literary theory, psychoanalysis, sociology, semiology, etc.), seeks to understand and explain these principles. My master’s thesis, titled “On the Aesthetics of Anomie…,” which examines two texts—Maurice Blanchot’s “Thomas l’obscur” and Henri Michaux’s “L’infini turbulent”—is intended as an example, if not an attempt, of this. (Abdelkader Benamer)