In solitude, manners, and the aesthetics of silence

Author: Maurice Blanchot, Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou Translation: Khaled Hussein The topics of the book are among the most occupied by creators and have taken from their interest, in terms of justification, interpretation, and attempt to understand. In this context, the book states that "writing is the beginning of affirming the solitude that fascination threatens. It is submission to the risk of the absence of time, where the eternal beginning repeats itself anew." The book emphasizes that writing is nothing but "a passage from the first person 'present' to the third person 'absent,' and then what happens to me does not happen to another, an unknown absent as much as it matters to me, repeating itself in endless dispersal. Therefore, writing is allowing fascination to take over language." The book also raises the following question, which is of equal importance: "Why should writing be linked to the fundamental solitude, the solitude whose core is the concealment that manifests within it?"