Kevin Hart and Geoffrey H. Hartman bring together essays by prominent scholars from a range of disciplines to focus on Blanchot’s diverse concerns: literature, art, community, politics, ethics, spirituality, and the Holocaust. The volume takes its title from Blanchot’s idea that literature is a power of contestation: contestation of the established power, contestation of what is…, contestation of language and of the forms of literary language, finally contestation of itself as power. Tracing this concept as a central theme of Blanchot’s writings, and exploring its scope and ambiguity, the contributors bring this seminal, but formidably difficult, intellect into sharper focus.