Yeah, I completely agree there! Important to be aware of what is going on but like you say, not to get too caught up in changing your ideas to suit what is hip. But you have to what you are doing can offer something to current debate, otherwise it seems a bit of a waste of time. I must admit, I am trying to brush up on the Speculative Realist stuff for this very reason...I know very litlte about it yet everyone seems very excited about it all. So I would need to know more about that side of things to consider Blanchot's relation. I would say that it is important to think the neutral without materiality though, or better yet through a different kind of materiality, perhaps closer to the way Derrida thinks materiality. The neutre is a way of thinkng in excess of any kind of positionality, any kind of truth, and any hope of temporality. It would, therefore, arrive with a different kind of temporality, sidestepping the logical modes of the visible and invisible, presence and absence, being and non-being, in favour of a neutral mode of thinking that interrupts this dialectic. That's the way I understand it anyway...so I would need to know more about the 'object' focus of SR to understand how it might relate.

Yeah maybe...but I am not sure if this 'old-fashioned' thing is more to do with this Speculative Realist trend in philosophy and the move away from those thinkers said to be part of the whole linguistic turn in philosophy. I personally think there is so much that is relevant in his work. And the truth is, he hasn't been used a great deal to talk about art forms other than literature and the ones he writes about. I have only read a couple of thinks where he has been used well in relationt to music and I haven't found anything about his thought in relation to film. So there is still so much to be done with his work. And I think more than any other writer of that time, his pros are incredibly clear even if they arrive at very complex ideas. And I guess as an aside, if you work never worries about being trendy and fashionable, then it will never go out of fashion haha.

Hi Alice,

Well I must say my knowledge of performance philosophy is very limited which is why I signed up here to learn more. But because of this I can only speak generally about Blanchot. I would agree, I don't think there is much humour in it at all but that said, it's beautiful stuff. I think the key is paradox...so the neutral is a way of framing what resists the realm of possibility as impossibility. It's all to do with language too, what resists us in our interpretation of the work of art, not as some kind of aesthetic sublime but as a radical impossibility. Where as the sublime is a way of thinking the impossible and still within our power, Blanchot neutral is a non-concept. The difficulty in his writing is how can you write that which resists what is written...and that is where the beauty comes in for me. I would strongly recommend The Infinite Conversation and Leslie Hill's commentaries on Blanchot, essential stuff. What is your interest?