The Experience of the Outside: Blanchot, Foucault and Deleuze

Following the success of her debut novel, "The House Key," which won the São Paulo Literature Prize, Tatiana Salem Levy takes a more circuitous path in "The Experience of the Outside," now in a new edition from Editora Record. The author analyzes the concept of "the outside," coined by Maurice Blanchot, to inform reflection on the relationship between literature and reality. The French philosopher challenged notions central to philosophy and literary theory. Language, thought, reality, and the author himself are the targets. "For Tatiana Salem Levy, the experience of art, and in particular literature, inaugurates a world apart, the world of the outside. It is in the theoretical aspects of this outside that the writer engages us," states Paulo Sergio Duarte, who wrote the book's blurb. Levy continues her analysis by showing how, based on Blanchot's concept, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze expanded the experience of the outside beyond literature. The former believes in the power of the "experience of the outside" against the dominance of knowledge and power, while Deleuze extols the transgressive power of the concept and its capacity to transform the world we live in. He broadens the discussion by associating the concept with cinema and the arts in general. "As can be seen, studying the outside is not limited to delimiting this concept; on the contrary, it constitutes a movement of opening up to other concepts and other questions. I believe that analyzing the experience of the outside in Blanchot, Foucault, and Deleuze can open paths for reflection in different areas of thought and different periods of our culture," concludes Tatiana.