Subjectivity of essential solitude: a study in Heidegger and Blanchot
There is a paradox lying within essential solitude: being an experience of radical subjectivity, it demonstrates the impossibility of the subject. Martin Heidegger and Maurice Blanchot, each from his own part, were rather sensitive to this paradox. For Heidegger solitude is, first of all, related to the concept of "authentic" (eigentlich) existence. The seclusion of Dasein, its individuation until its "ownmost" way of being is associated mainly with such "fundamental moods" as Angst and boredom (Langeweile). But, paradoxically, this "ownmost" experience individualizing being-in-the-world is radically impersonal, and its impersonality even overcomes the everyday impersonality of "the They" (das Man). If in everydayness of being-in-the-world the impersonal character of "the They" is mostly concealed, then in the "ownmost" experience it is bared and reveals itself in all its magnitude. Nonetheless, even in this situation we can still talk of some atavistic subjectivity of a "mute witness" (martyr) similar to the "Earth" opposing the "World" in the work of art. For Blanchot essential solitude is no longer the solitude of being-in-the-world, but the solitude of being without the world - before, after, or just beyond it. When talking about the literary experience, Blanchot associates essential solitude not with the figure of author, but rather with the work of literature itself: it is the work that stands completely alone, without any general order or context. Essential solitude is related to the statement that the work itself is - to the elementary ontological "there is", without any sense or negativity. The author is related to essential solitude not because of his or her own subjectivity, but rather because of his or her relation to the work. The experience of writing reveals it as a shift from the position of the subject of one''s own speech to the so called narrative voice - neutral, impersonal, belonging to no one. This shift is considered by Blanchot as analogous to the experience of death which can never be experienced in the first person. The essential solitude for Blanchot is the experience of one''s own absence. There is no me when I am alone, there is "Someone" (Quelqu''un). And it is this faceless "Someone" who is the real subject of essential solitude, if this is a subject at all. This "Someone" reminds of a grammatical subject of impersonal sentences, such as Heidegger''s es gibt or Emmanuel Levinas'' il y a, ontological formulae expressing the bare fact of being. So, as it seems to be, "Someone" is but a personification of a principally impersonal ontological element. But is there any essential necessity for this personification, except that of grammatical use? If there is such, it can be well expressed by Blanchot''s formula "subjectivity without subject". It is analogous to Levinas'' "existence without existent", so within it "subjectivity" becomes the name of ineffacement itself.