Book 1, The Marquis : Chapter 2, The Marquis according to Maurice Blanchot Summary

In this section, the commentary about the author continues. The Marquis was forcibly constrained to live "the life of the mind" due to his incarceration. It has previously been stated that due to imprisonment, he was turned into a writer. There is an important set of interrelated themes presented in this section. Blanchot begins to discuss the division of the society into hierarchical classes. Then, the relationship of behavior into categorization as "crime" or acceptable to social rank is explored. Finally, criminal behavior is also clearly examined and the hypothesis is put forth that criminal behavior is often a behavioral effort to compensate for oppression. Hence, some injustice led to injustice. All of this is investigated within the context of the movement of the libertine...