Survivances du neutre
Survivals of the Neutral

Summary/Abstract: The French epistemologicallandscape has witnessed, since the 1950s,the emergence of a rather strange catego-ry: the neutral. From Maurice Blanchot toRoland Barthes, passing through the worksof Gilles Deleuze and Louis Marin, as well asphenomenology and a significant share ofpost-Freudian psychoanalysis, the neutralhas not ceased to challenge and fascinatemodern thought. Assuming as starting pointa today forgotten medical use of the word,still encountered during the Renaissance, myarticle aims to identify the forms in whichthis medical reference survives in contem-porary ways of conceiving the neutral. Thepresent essay examines more closely theemergence of this category, its conceptualfiliations, the transformations it has under-gone, and the effects it has produced, with aview to contributing to what may be called a(cultural) memory of the neutral.

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