ABSTRACT
This article addresses Virno's diagnosis of the capture of the ability to speak in post-Fordist capitalism by bringing his notion of virtuosity into dialogue with Blanchot's notion of messianism. As the author shows, Virno explores the way in which what he calls virtuosity draws upon what he calls the “background” of speech, which, the author argues, is linked to the idea of the impersonal form “one speaks” in Deleuze and Guattari. Blanchot gives an alternative account of this “background”, focusing on its operation in the interpersonal relation he characterises as messianic. Since Blanchot's account of the interpersonal relation is developed in his theoretical work chiefly through a reading of Levinas, the author traces Blanchot's divergence from his friend on the key question of the significance of the Other, which Levinas places at the heart of his reflections on the ethical. The author then shows that this divergence also accounts for the way in which Blanchot reads Levinas's notions of Judaism, God and the Messiah. Finally, the author shows how a redeveloped notion of virtuosity might give rise to a practice in which the capture of our ability to speak is challenged at the level of our interpersonal relations. The author uses Blanchot's reflections on the events of May 1968 as an example of the way in which we might “affirm the break” such virtuosity or messianism constitutes.
