The laudatory essay, in which one author praises the work of
another, is frequently characterized as an unimportant, even
uncritical mode of writing. But as Eleanor Kaufman argues in "The
Delirium of Praise, " this mode of exchange is serious and
substantial enough to merit scholarly attention. By not conforming
to standard practices of critical discourse, laudatory essays give
new status to supposedly inferior forms of communication and states
of being--including chatter, silence, sickness, imbalance, and
absence of work--and emphasize affective states or emotions such as
joy, friendship, and longing.
"The Delirium of Praise" examines a group of five
twentieth-century French intellectuals--Georges Bataille, Maurice
Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Pierre
Klossowski--and their laudatory essays about each other. Structured
as a circular series of exchanges, the book examines pairings of
two thinkers with respect to a given theme. The exchange between
Bataille and Blanchot takes up the themes of chatter and silence
with regard to the novelist Louis-Rene des Forets; the
Blanchot-Foucault exchange explores friendship and impersonality
through the lens of Jacques Derrida; the Foucault-Deleuze exchange
considers "absence of work" ( "desoeuvrement") and the obscure
French philosopher Jacques Martin; the Deleuze-Klossowski exchange
revolves around the question of the sick body and the person of
Nietzsche; and the final exchange between Klossowski and Bataille
focuses on imbalanced economies and the writings of the Marquis de
Sade. Where the praise is most excessive, approaching delirium,
Kaufman locates a powerful thought-energy that pushes the laudatory
essay to its limits. In her conclusion, she presents this unique
mode of thought exchange as a form of intellectual hospitality.
Kaufman uncovers a suspension of subjectivity, of personality,
even of place and time, that is both articulated in the laudatory
essays and enacted by them. Her examination of this neglected mode
as practiced by five important French thinkers offers a unique
perspective on twentieth-century intellectual history.
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