Eccentric Modernities: Shklovsky, Benjamin, Blanchot
Eccentric Modernities: Shklovsky, Benjamin, Blanchot

Summary/Abstract: Despite striking similarities and documented intellectual affinities, the common grounds of Shklovsky’s, Benjamin’s, and Blanchot’s critical reflection on modernity have never made the object of theoretical attention. At the same time, recent relational readings of Shklovsky and Benjamin, and Benjamin and Blanchot, respectively, are indicative of the growing impact of such a treatment on the current developments in literary and cultural studies (Boym 2005, Tihanov 2005, Liska 2014, Allen 2015). Against this background, the aim of my paper is to provide a comparative discussion of the understanding of space in Shklovsky, Benjamin, and Blanchot by tackling the common theme of displacement understood as ‘dual trope of the moving body and of the movement of thought’ (Baqué 2006). The purpose of such a discussion is to show how displacement, a fluid concept describing both physical motion and the intricate paths of reflection, can be used to explore the lateral ways, invisible gaps and in-between spaces in the fabric of the intellectual project of late modernity.

• Details
• Contents