In this thesis I attempt to outline the unwritable foundation of the writing of Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003), through the notion of the disaster. By tracing the writing of the unwritable in L’Écriture du désastre [1980] I argue for the need to return to the late work of Blanchot which has often been left aside, due to its inability to coincide with a fixed position within a theoretical field. This mobility, which situates Blanchot in the gap between philosophy and literature, is traced through an approaching reading that intends to examine how the unwritable unfolds as an understanding that differs from the established narrative of the absolute negativity which is deemed to determine Blanchot’s thinking. Rather my reading emphasizes on the affirmative aspects of writing that emerge in the literary composition of the disaster, through Blanchot’s attempt to write the event that has always already happened and thus exists on the outside of writing. By examining the manner in which this unwritability overlap with the non-diachronic dimensions of the fragmentary writing of Blanchot, I suggest that his notion of writing is constituted by that which cannot be written. This, in turn, eventuates in an affirmation of the very withdrawal which makes writing unwritable. Through Roland Barthes’ idea of the pleasure of the text this affirmative aspect is further demonstrated in order to realize a greater understanding of the relation between writing and the other, philosophy and literature.