ACADEMIA Letters

Disasters, pandemic and repetition: a dialogue with

Maurice Blanchot’s literature
Leonardo Mattietto

Based on The Writing of the Disaster, the transcendent book written by French philosopher
Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), this paper praises the dense imagery of the author’s thought
for proposing connections between major environmental disasters (such as those that occurred
in Mariana and Brumadinho, Brazil) and the pandemic of Covid-19. Therefore, it calls for
scientific knowledge of catastrophes towards preparing appropriate responses to these unfor-
tunate events that repeatedly happen in human history.
The origins of the word disaster point to the separation of a star, thus, bad luck, the calami-
tous and totalitarian disgrace annihilating all that previously existed.

If disaster means being separated from the star (if it means the decline which
characterizes disorientation when the link with fortune from on high is cut), then
it indicates a fall beneath disastrous necessity. Would law be the disaster? The
supreme or extreme law, that is: the excessiveness of uncodifiable law – that to
which we are destined without being party to it. The disaster is not our affair and
has no regard for us; it is the heedless unlimited; it cannot be measured in terms
of failure or as pure and simple loss.[1]

It plagues reality dramatically and erases past forms:“The disaster takes care of every-
thing.”[2]

Nothing suffices to the disaster; this means that just as it is foreign to the ruinous
purity of destruction, so the idea of totality cannot delimit it. If all things were
reached by it and destroyed – all gods and men returned to absence – and if
nothing were substituted for everything, it would still be too much and too little.[3]

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Leonardo Mattietto, leonardo.mattietto@unirio.br

Citation: Mattietto, L. (2021). Disasters, pandemic and repetition: a dialogue with Maurice Blanchot’s
literature. Academia Letters, Article 1825. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1825.

1
 Intensive exploration of the environment has led to the accentuation of violent and de-
structive phenomena. The Covid-19 pandemic outbreak may be a ubiquitous sign of how
much the human species threatens its habitat.
The consciousness that biodiversity collapse is anthropogenically caused and in many
cases avoidable prompts frequent use of the rhetoric of disaster to portray the human-induced
shock to earth’s ecosystems. Amid such environmental distress, the collapse of biodiversity,
global warming, melting glaciers, peak extraction of natural resources, structural poverty,
intense pollution, high impact industries, and large zones of monocropping anticipate the
scenario of a planet becoming orphaned of life.[4]
The main risks are created and increased inconsequently by men, in their infinite saga of
nature domination (of which they are part, even when they do not realize it). The culture of
immediacy pushes society to forget the past and to not care about the future.
History should not be neglected, as people could look to the past to prepare for the future:
“all things in life that have once existed tend to recur.”[5] It would be wise to awaken to the
human capacity to anticipate the good and bad facts repeated in the life cycle.
The rupture of the mining tailings dam in Brumadinho, Brazil, in 2019, recalled the sim-
ilar tragedy of Mariana, also in Brazil, which occurred in 2015. These, as well as so many
others worldwide, are shameful examples of environmental disasters that give rise to regret-
ful indignation. Nevertheless, lessons remain to warn that the damage suffered in a disturbing
cadence does not happen again.

A nonreligious repetition, neither mournful nor nostalgic, a return not desired.

Wouldn’t the disaster be, then, the repetition – the affirmation – of the singularity
of the extreme? The disaster or the unverifiable, the improper.[6]

In Blanchot’s text, “disaster lies and comes about in discovering this murder and its con-
stant repetition, in the face of which all knowledge of the origin disappears.”[7]
Many comparisons have been drawn between the Covid-19 pandemic and the so-called
Spanish Flu that hit the world from 1918 to 1920. In contrast, science now has far more
resources than it did a century ago.
The way society values scientific knowledge reflects its political maturity and the ability
to overcome the most acute crises. Science has been its most potent ally in favor of survival
and of gaining quality of life.
It is essential to be aware that the delicate balance that allows, in different contexts, hu-
man existence, may not last forever. While the spheres of power remain inert or impotent,
permanent marks result for the affected ecosystems and populations, aggravated by the loss
of many lives and the compromise of well-being.[8]

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Leonardo Mattietto, leonardo.mattietto@unirio.br

Citation: Mattietto, L. (2021). Disasters, pandemic and repetition: a dialogue with Maurice Blanchot’s
literature. Academia Letters, Article 1825. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1825.

2
 Disasters must be examined, and their causes must be investigated as to the role that hu-
manity’s laws in one context might play outside their defined remit where environmental and
other disasters manifest. It is vital to establish, with scientifically verifiable evidence, a sus-
tainable political-legal structure that acknowledges environmental impact and seeks ways to
address the features of destruction.

Un-knowledge is not a lack of knowledge; it is not even knowledge of the lack but
rather that which is hidden by knowledge and ignorance alike: the neutral, the
un-manifest.[9]

Large-scale catastrophes emphasize “the need for lawmaking institutions that are better
able to overcome the human tendency to fail to apprehend the full spatial and temporal scope
of the environmental risks generated by modern technology.”[10]
Not allowing this learning is an arrogant demonstration of obscurantism and not putting
it into practice is a real wastage. Studying environmental disasters will help prevent other
calamities from occurring. A broad understanding of the Covid-19 pandemic, from different
perspectives (not only medical or biological but also from anthropological and social angles),
should help humanity face and win this significant challenge.
Blanchot’s catastrophe refers to the destruction caused by wars, to the Holocaust. This
letter proposes an environmental reading of The Writing of the Disaster in a way that we
might reappraise the ethical challenges that finitude necessarily imposes.
Structured knowledge must prevail over common sense. Prudence and the gradual scale of
actions and interventions must replace improvisation and the formulation of untimely policies.
“It is the dark disaster that brings the light.”[11] It is essential to plan and manage con-
sistently, without losing sight of the enactment, diffusion, and enforcement, with scientific
bases, of the law and public policies.

References
[1] Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press, 1986, 2

[2] Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 3

[3] Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 2

[4] Joshua Schuster, How to Write the Disaster, Minnesota Rev, 83, 164

[5] Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol 1: Swann’s Way, New York: The Modern
Library, 1992, 498

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Leonardo Mattietto, leonardo.mattietto@unirio.br

Citation: Mattietto, L. (2021). Disasters, pandemic and repetition: a dialogue with Maurice Blanchot’s
literature. Academia Letters, Article 1825. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1825.

3
[6] Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 5

[7] Christophe Bident, Maurice Blanchot: a critical biography, New York: Fordham UP,
2019, 412

[8] Leonardo Mattietto, Environmental catastrophes law and literature: Maurice Blanchot
and The Writing of the Disaster, Public Policy Law, 2 (1), 83

[9] Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 63

[10] Richard Lazarus, Environmental Law After Katrina: Reforming Environmental Law by
Reforming Environmental Lawmaking, Tulane Law Rev, 81 (4), 1020

[11] Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 7

Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Leonardo Mattietto, leonardo.mattietto@unirio.br

Citation: Mattietto, L. (2021). Disasters, pandemic and repetition: a dialogue with Maurice Blanchot’s
literature. Academia Letters, Article 1825. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1825.