Of an Indecisive Mediocrity: Between écriture blanche and écriture neutre
Despre mediocritatea indecisă. Între alb şi neutru

Summary/Abstract: Starting from one of the questions raised in the call for papers to this issue – whether one can speak of “mediocre writing” (écriture du médiocre) in the same way as one speaks of “blank writing” (écriture blanche) or “writing of the neuter” (écriture neutre) – this article seeks to establish the possibility of a relationship of similarity between mediocrity and the neuter. Three instances of the neuter will be discussed, namely: the neuter as écriture blanche (cf. Roland Barthes), the neuter as an intermediary state between health and illness (cf. Renaissance medical thinking), and the neuter as a narrative – rather than as a narrating – voice of the body-text (cf. Maurice Blanchot). However, these semantic actualisations uncover three “mediocre” states, as it were, if this term is made to agree with its old “neutral”, rather than pejorative, usage: the linguistic state of “the third term”, the medical state of the “neutral body”, and the musical, textual state of the “disagreeing agreement” (accord discordant). These three linguistic as well as cultural movements led me to speak of an “indecisive mediocrity”, thus displacing one of Maurice Blanchot’s phrases onto a new context.

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