Blanchot and Kafka

Internationaal seminarie
7-8 december 2017
Hof van Liere
Prinsstraat 13 - 2000 Antwerpen

Seminarie georganizeerd in samenwerking met het Center for European Philosophy (Universiteit Antwerpen) en met de steun van FWO-Vlaanderen en de Raad Dienstverlening van de Universiteit Antwerpen.

In this seminar, a systematic examination of the Blanchot/Kafka connection will be presented, on the basis of Blanchot’s translations of Kafka. The works of Franz Kafka had an important significance for Blanchot, who dedicated more than seven essays to examining Kafka. These essays were collected in the book De Kafka à Kafka. Blanchot quotes Kafka in most of his work on the transformation of literary narrative in the 20th century and the appearance of the neuter. He relates several issues which are central in his own approach to literature to the work of Kafka, such as the passage from the “I” to the “he” in the experience of writing, the experience of estrangement in the act of narrating, and the outside. The aim of the seminar is to examine and discuss Blanchot’s interpretation of Kafka, the influence Kafka may have had on Blanchot's own fiction and critical reflections, and more in general the impact (or absence of it) of the Blanchot/Kafka connection on contemporary literary theory. Blanchot’s translations of some of Kafka's writings, to be published this fall, will likely constitute an interesting point of departure to (re)consider these issues.

Met bijdragen van o.a. Arthur Cools (Universiteit Antwerpen), Marco Gutjahr (Universität Rostock), Kevin Hart (University of Virginia), Leslie Hill (University of Warwick), Eric Hoppenot (Université Paris Sorbonne-ESPE), Vivian Liska (Instituut voor Joodse Studies), Alain Milon (Université Paris Nanterre), Annelies Schulte Nordholt (Universiteit Leiden) en Aukje van Rooden (Universiteit van Amsterdam).