Article in Law and Literature · July 2007 doi: 10. 1525/lal

2 9 9
T h u r s c h w e l l
•
W r i t i n g a n d T e r r o r
.
Blanchot, 
supra
note 

at 

.
.
I have discussed this aspect of Blanchot’s essay elsewhere. See Adam Thurschwell, “Law and Litera-
ture and the Right to Death,” in Gert Hofmann, ed., 
Figures of Law: Studies in the Interference of Law
and Literature
(Tübingen: A. Francke Verlag, 

), 

, 

–

. The notion that there is a deep connec-
tion between the meaning-function of language and death is hardly unique to Blanchot. For a contem-
porary meditation on this theme in Hegel and Heidegger’s work, see Giorgio Agamben, 
Language and
Death: The Place of Negativity
, K. Pinkus and M. Hardt, trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnsota
Press, 

). 
.
Blanchot, 
supra
note 

at 

(“Revolutionary action is in every respect analogous to action as embodied
in literature”). 
.
Blanchot, 
supra
note 

at 

. 
.
See also
 
Paul de Man, “Social Contract: Promises,” in 
Allegories of Reading

(Yale University Press,

) (“the logic of grammar generates texts only in the absence of referential meaning”). 
.
Blanchot, 
supra
note 

at 

. 
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

. 
.
Blanchot, 
supra
note 

at 

.
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

. 
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

, 

, 

. 
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

, 

–

, 

–

. 
.
Id
. at 

. 
.
Id
. 
.
Id
. at 

. 
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

. 
.
Id
. 
.
Boxall, 
supra
note 

at 

. 
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

. 
.
Id
. at 

. 
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

. 
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

. 
.
Id
. at 

. 
.
Id
. at 

.
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

. 
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

.
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

.
.
Id
. 
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

.
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

.
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

, 

.
.
DeLillo, 
supra
note 

at 

, 

. This is not to say that the cyber-capitalist and the terrorist are opposed
at all points; indeed, DeLillo, at least, makes it clear that at their extremes, they can begin to merge.
Faced with the imminent loss of his entire fortune in the currency markets and the likelihood that he will
be murdered in the near future, Eric Packer, perhaps for the first time, faces directly upon his own
death—a “principle of fate that he’s always known would come clear in time”—and discovers, again
perhaps for the first time, a reason to “begin the business of living”:
. . . [T]here was trembling pleasure to be found, and joy at all misfortune, in the swift pitch
of markets down. But it was the threat of death at the brink of night that spoke to him most
surely about some principle of fate he’s always known would come clear in time.
Now he could begin the business of living. 
Id
., 

. 
LAL1902_07.fm Page 299 Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:21 PM

---