In this way, Blanchot’s voice understands—or declares—itself to be the voice of someone alive, yet already reported missing or believed dead: dead, that is, while still living on in his own words, according to the sameness of those words that still persist (even though history itself may have been broken in two), and yet who can speak only with that break in his throat. And what sustains such a voice is the “absolute responsibility” of having to be responsible for what is always without guarantee and without response. . . .
But [this voice] restores to each one of us, strangely, the chance and duty of risking ourselves in our turn . . . amidst a world that is made up no longer (at least not immediately) of the violent contrast between fever and shame, but of a care that is itself uncertain of what it means, and hesitates as to whether “literature” still has any sense, even the sense of casting suspicion upon itself, or whether sense does not now run somewhere else (but certainly not through religion, science, or philosophy), given that it always runs somewhere, even if it is against the flow, in its own absence, or furtively.