“Everyday Speech”, published in 1987, is the English translation of Maurice Blanchot’s essay, “La Parole Quotidienne”, which was originally published in 1959. The source of the English translation is Yale French Studies, No. 73, Everyday Life (1987), pp. 12-20.
“[…] the everyday escapes. This is its definition. We cannot help but miss it if we seek it through knowledge, for it belongs to a region where there is still nothing to know, just as it is prior to all relation insofar as it has always already been said, even while remaining unformulated, that is to say, not yet information […] it is always already there, but that it may be there does not guarantee it’s actualization. On the contrary, the everyday is always unrealized in its very actualization which no event, however important or however insignificant, can ever produce. Nothing happens; this is the everyday”.
