The Inoperative Community
by Nancy, Jean-Luc (1991)
Key Passage
Absence of community represents that which does not fulfil community or community itself inasmuch as it cannot be fulfilled or engendered as ~ new individual. In this sense, " the appurtenance of every possible community to what I call ... absence of community must be the ground of any possible community." In the absence of community neither the work of community, nor the community as work, nor communism can fulfil itself; rather, the passion of and for community propagates itself, unworked, appealing, demanding to pass beyond every limit and every fulfilment enclosed in the form of an individual. It is thus not an absence, but a movement, it is unworking in its singular "activity," it is the propagation, even the contagion, or again the communication of community itself that propagates itself or communicates its contagion by its very interruption. This contagion interrupts fusion and suspends communion. and this arrest or rupture once again leads back to the communication of community. Instead of closing it in, this interruption once again exposes singularity to its limit, which is to say, to other singularities. Instead of fulfilling itself in a work of death and in the immanence of a subject, community communicates itself through the repetitio n and the contagion of birth s: each birth exposes another singularity. a supplementary limit, and therefore another communication. This is not the opposite of death, for the death of this singular being who has just been born is also inscribed and communicated by its limit. It is already exposed to its death, and it exposes us to it as well. Which means, essentially, that this death as well as this birth are removed from us, are neither our work nor the work of the collectivity. (p.60)
Keywords
Philosophy, Community, Mythology, Communism, Literature, Love, Divinity, Individuality, CommunicationThemes
The Inoperative Community, Nancy CitationsLinks to Reference
Translator
Connor, P.; Garbus, L.; Holland, M.; Sawhney, S.Citation
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