INFINITE DISTANCE: READING AND RADICALIZATION OF THE CONCEPT OF ‘AESTHETIC DISTANCE’ IN MAURICE BLANCHOT’S AND WALTER BENJAMIN’S WORKS

• Autor(a) principal: Fernández H., Diego
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: spa
• Título da fonte: Kriterion (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/kriterion/article/view/36104
• topic: aesthetic distance; infinite distance; art criticism; limit-experience; désœuvrement; Aesthetic distance; Infinite distance; Art criticismo; Limit-experience; Désoeuvrement

While the concept of “infinite distance” (ID) appears as such only in the work of Maurice Blanchot, in this paper we argue that it could be productively coined with Walter Benjamin as well. We argue that (1) the concept of ID is elaborated from a revision, a re-signification, and a radicalization of the modern concept of “aesthetic distance”, and that (2) this modification is fundamentally based on the interpretations that both, Benjamin and Blanchot, make first of early German Romanticism, and later of the work of Franz Kafka. This modification, we argue, (3) contains a shift in the ground of the concept: the concept of ID has no longer as ground the domain of the subjective faculties (i.e. the ‘judgment of taste’), but the domain of art and language. We show lastly (4) that the concept of ID presupposes the existence of a ‘fragmentary impulse’ within literary works, that can be understood as a “limit-experience” for the subjectivity.