Area (2007) 39.

3, 349– 356

Questioning community as a collective antidote

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

to fear: Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘singularity’ and

‘being singular plural’
Richard V Welch* and Ruth Panelli**
*Department of Geography, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Email: rvw@geography.otago.ac.nz
**Department of Geography, University College London, London WC1E 8RG

Revised manuscript received 30 March 2007

Community has long been a key academic concept and lay narrative, especially in
commentaries of rural as opposed to urban life. Although community is proffered as an
antidote for a plethora of emotional, social and policy challenges in contemporary Western
societies, we argue that it is problematic. Previously, we suggested that community is a
device mobilised in response to fears surrounding finitude. In this paper, we again draw
on Nancy’s theorising of singularity and being-in-common, but also engage with his yet
more fundamental conceptualisation of ‘being singular plural’ to suggest directions for
new geographies of singular and collective life.

Key words: ‘being singular plural’, community, fear, others, singularity

condition via the construction of ‘common-being’-

Introduction
In lay, popular and policy terms, community continues
to be invoked as a hope, a vehicle and a respon-
sibility, via which numerous social and political
challenges might be overcome. Indeed, despite the
political suspicion levelled at attempts to claim com-
monality, and its more extreme renditions that emerge
in fundamentalism, nationalism and totalitarianism
(Nancy 1991 2000; Secomb 2000; Donovan 2002),
community, understood as some achievement of
‘common-being’,1 continues to appeal and be strateg-
ically mobilised (Staeheli and Thompson 1997;
Rodriguez 1999; Mackenzie and Dalby 2003). An
intriguing issue is why this should be so.
As we have suggested elsewhere (Panelli and Welch
2005), deeply felt experiences of the ‘finitude of
singularity’ (Nancy 1991) motivate social constructions
of community as collectives of would-be common-
beings. We outlined how Nancy shows that the
challenges of singularity (as the singular experience
of finite existence) result in attempts to assuage this
based notions of community, even when these con-
structions are demonstrably mythical and politically
suspect (Nancy 1991). But the drive to imagine/
create collective frames of experience or connection,
such as community, appears undiminished, notwith-
standing the twentieth-century critique and dissolution
of God, sovereign, and the hopes of socialism and
communism, and the more recent ‘demand that we
are capable of saying “we” ’ (Nancy 2000, 41–2).
How can we account for this disjuncture between
the ontological position developed by Nancy, which
rejects ‘common-being’, immanent community as a
fiction, and repeated empirical examples of groups
endeavouring to construct such communities? And
what are the implications of this disjuncture for research
in human geography? In this paper we first outline
Nancy’s theorising of the conditions of ‘singularity’
and ‘being singular plural’, and their ramifications
for community. We then consider ways in which
beings appear to step back from the senselessness of
singular finitude (Luszczynska 2005) to engage with

Area Vol. 39 No. 3, pp. 349–356, 2007

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350 Welch and Panelli
collectives that promise to assuage fear by position-
ing Others. Finally, we suggest a reading of Nancy’s
theorising that allows new geographies of singularity
and collectives to be imagined.
Concepts of community, singularity and
‘being singular plural’
Philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy holds key concerns about
the excesses of community, national sovereignty,
identity politics and war.2 In The Inoperative Com-
munity (1991), Nancy engages debates surrounding
community. He critiques constructions of community,
and contends that community can never be the
idealised fantasy of common-being, nor a unity
of experience or perspective. Instead, he proposes
community as an imprecise collective of beings
who have in common the experience of singular
finitude; singular beings who variously understand
the exigencies of living as beings-in-common (Panelli
and Welch 2005). Each being more-or-less explicitly
experiences existential challenge (awareness of the
senseless meaning of death) in the contexts in which
they live. In this sense, a community of beings-in-
common is always a shifting and incompletely worked
phenomenon ‘that remains porous and malleable’
(Soriel 2004, 219), and inevitably remains inoperative
(Nancy 1991; Rose 1997a; Secomb 2000).3
While Nancy’s thinking, to this point, emphasises
some reasons for on-going human engagement with
collectives such as communities, it does not detail
where and how finite existence is experienced, nor the
significance of space and place for the inoperative
community (Panelli and Welch 2005). We suggest it
is necessary to engage some of Nancy’s deeper theor-
ising, specifically the ideas developed in his Being
Singular Plural (2000), to gain a clearer picture.
Key to understanding Nancy’s theoretical position
with respect to community is his conception of ‘Being’.
He proposes to ‘reverse the order of ontological
exposition’ (2000, 31) – that is, to reverse how we
might understand the world and our being in it. He
challenges past proposals that Being precedes the
possibility of being-with-others, philosophically dis-
solving the contention that there is ever a ‘single,
substantial essence of Being itself’ (2000, 12, 29).
Instead, he emphasises (the experience of) Being as a
‘co-existence’; always a case of ‘being-with’, where the
‘with’ is not subordinate to the notion of Being. Indeed:
it is not the case that the ‘with’ is an addition to some
prior Being; instead, the ‘with’ is at the heart of Being
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
. . . if Being is being-with, then it is . . . the ‘with’ that
constitutes Being; the with is not simply an addition.
(2000, 30)
Thus Being involves being-with-others, and ‘the
singular-plural constitutes the essence of Being’
(Nancy 2000, 29). Being in this simultaneously
singular and plural form involves continual cross-
referencing between ‘self’ and the non-self ‘other’
not as binary poles but as a continuous condition of
co-constitution.
Extending from his exposition of ‘Being’, Nancy
argues that ‘self’ and ‘other’ are more closely entwined
than is acknowledged in binary constructions that
promote the ‘self’ and demonise the ‘other’. Accord-
ing to Nancy, ‘Self’, as a singular plural being, occurs
only in conjunction ‘with’. That is, ‘Self’ is experi-
enced as being-with (i.e. a co-existing with a plurality
of singularities). The distance and spacing of ‘with’
frame the recognition of ‘others’ within the totality
of ‘being-with’; ‘self’ and ‘other’ are each essential
components of the singular plural.
How might ‘others’ be recognised? According to
Nancy, the plurality of singularity means that, beyond
a particular singular being, the others implied in
‘being-with’ are some distance across a ‘void’. The
‘with’ is:
a mark drawn out over the void, which crosses over
it and underlines it at the same time, thereby
constituting the drawing apart [traction] and the
drawing together [tension] of the void. (2000, 62;
original/translators insertions)
This coincident drawing apart, and drawing together,
enables an ontological framing of an ‘other’; a way
to think, not just about the condition of being,
but also about the existence of other beings. The
identification and ostracism of an ‘Other’ is also
related. Nancy’s (2000, 10–11, 20) discussion of
‘accessing the origin’4 and his related contention
about distinguishing between ‘other’ and ‘Other’,
concludes that the former is a core component of
being, ontologically, whereas the latter is a social
construction designed to ameliorate frustrations at
not fully comprehending our collective state of being.
In Being, beings navigate the existence of singular
plurality as well as plural singularity in ontological
ways, i.e. that shape how we might think about the
condition of existence (including what we experi-
ence in the social world). But this co-existence does
not infer a collective of singulars in some unified
‘society’ or common-being ‘community’. Rather, being
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 Questioning community as a collective antidote to fear 351
singular plural posits connection as opposed to same-
ness; a togetherness ‘insofar as it spaces them [that
is the togetherness spaces the plurality of singulars];
they are “linked” . . . [but] they are not unified’
(Nancy 2000, 33).
Thus, while ‘with’ gestures to the possibility of
‘connection’ and ‘between’, as conceptualised by
Nancy (2000, 5), these are complex notions in that
they expose, as well as bridge, the distances, differ-
ences and spaces separating singular (plural) selves.
For Nancy, the potency of ‘connection’ and ‘between’
exists in a conception of community as a connec-
tion of beings-in-common that distances at the very
moment that it appears to bind:
The ‘between’ is the stretching out . . . and the
distance opened by the singular as such . . . There is
proximity, but only to the extent that extreme
closeness emphasizes the distancing it opens up.
(Nancy 2000, 5)
This perspective contrasts with previous uncritical
senses of ‘with’ and ‘connection’ in myths of com-
munity constructed as common-being. Indeed, Nancy’s
ontological position challenges much existing academic
theorising about being and community by suggesting
that community cannot be a construction but is the
event-of-being-with, or that which constitutes being.
As such, Nancy requires us to question our own
ontological position and to delve into the ways that
we know we are. At one and the same time, he
proffers the potentially releasing possibility that
being is being-with and, therefore, of community –
but that for beings there is no avoiding awareness of
the senselessness of singular finitude. Perhaps not
surprisingly, relatively few human geographers have
taken up the offer and sought to articulate Nancy’s
ontological take with the world of would-be socially
constructed experience. Yet, we believe, the devel-
opment of such links promises a nuanced understand-
ing of human engagement with social collectives.
In the sections of the paper that follow, we propose
a way forward; to employ Nancy’s take on ‘being’
and ‘being singular plural’ to theorise the compulsion
beings display in (re)creating collectives/communities
even when aware of the limited effectiveness and
shelf life of such collectives. The objective is to be
better positioned to undertake research that empir-
ically identifies the limitations of such collectives and,
thereby, gesturing to the possibility of a revitalised
approach to research in human geography. In the first
instance, we propose a re-reading of geographies of
community and fear.
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Re-reading geographies of community
and fear
Our interest in Nancy’s philosophy stems from its
capacity to illuminate the articulation between com-
munity and the experience of fear (Liepins 2000;
Welch 2002; Panelli et al. 2004). With respect to
community, both uncritical and more nuanced
accounts engage with ideals of belonging. Uncritical
studies add to, and reinforce, this idealisation,
presenting community as a predominantly positive
phenomenon, where members share common ex-
perience and consequently a sense of belonging.
More nuanced accounts show that such notions
are the product of commercial, popular and lay
discourses that depict ‘community’ life in highly
constructed terms (e.g. Halfacree 1994 1995;
Mackenzie and Dalby 2003). However, even these
criticisms do not explain why such constructions are
repeatedly invoked, nor do they provide a robust
theorisation of the way difference is managed within
such collectives.
Developments in geographies of emotion have
highlighted the relationship between experiences of
community and fear. Much of the literature has had
an urban focus and exemplified how social forma-
tions and places are uncritically constructed; for
example, the way family, home and neighbourhood
have been associated with harmony, order and
safety in comparison to other more threatening and
disordered urban spaces (Cresswell 1992; Pain 2000;
O’Dougherty 2006). The inappropriateness of con-
structing the urban in this simplistic, binary way,
however, is well noted (Warrington 2001).5 Similarly,
other studies have challenged the often assumed
urban:rural binary, progressively demonstrating the
fiction of rural communities as places of tranquillity
and safety, presenting evidence that fear and crime
also coexist there (Valentine 1997; Yarwood and
Gardner 2000; Little et al. 2005).
The articulation between fear (of the unknown, of
strangers) and the process of othering is strong in
these works, but there is a need to unpack the pro-
cesses involved. Rural-based studies have begun to
critique community where numerous ‘Others’ (includ-
ing young people, travellers and itinerant workers)
are identified as disruptive, threatening beings who
generate fear and mistrust and who must be man-
aged to the margins of rural society (Sibley 1995;
Kraack and Kenway 2002; Little et al. 2005). Hitherto,
the presence of such fear and Othering has been
explained in terms of difference and its perceived
352 Welch and Panelli
threat to the character of would-be homogeneous
(safe and secure) communities.
The disproportionate scale of such reaction, how-
ever, suggests that common-being communities are
fragile things. Studies have shown just how quickly
the apparent homogeneity of community disintegrates
to expose marginalisation, ostracism and unsustain-
ability when the ideals of common-being and common
experience are challenged (Cloke and Little 1997;
Hubbard 2005b). Together with the observed con-
tinuous reworking of community, it suggests to us
the need for further theorising of community and
the expression of fear around it.
Here, we see Nancy’s ontological exposition as
providing a basis for theoretical and practical pro-
gression. For Nancy (2000), fear is not of difference
per se, but of others who expose our singularity –
despite our best efforts to disguise it by defining and
defending would-be common-being communities that
position others as alien or abject Other. To demonise
others in this way serves to prolong the illusion of
collective belonging, and accounts for the tendency
to successively Other different groups as the relief
gained from earlier Othering episodes dissipates.
This is a defence mechanism but not, according
to Nancy, one whose prime purpose is to protect
community. Rather, underpinning this drive is what
Nancy (2000) presents as the human desire to ‘fix
the origin’, by which he means ‘establish meaning
in existence’. Fuelling this process is ‘curiosity’
about the role of the ‘other’ in the definition of the
origin and of self (2000, 15–20). Ontologically, Nancy
distinguishes between singularity of the origin in the
other, and the alternative of seeking to appropriate
the origin – looking ‘for the unique and exclusive
origin’ (2000, 20). In this second form, any (other) thing
perceived to challenge the self, or some collective
(e.g. community) with which the self identifies, is
cast as the ‘Other’ ‘according to the mode of desire
or hatred’ (Nancy 2000, 20).
In contrast, Nancy argues that the origin can be
accessed through an alter, rather than alien, sense
of the other:
it is not a question of an aliud or an alius, or an
alienus, or an other in general as the essential stranger
who is opposed to what is proper, but of an alter, that
is, ‘one of the two’. This ‘other,’ this ‘lowercase other,’
is ‘one’ among many . . . it is each one . . . one among
all, and one among us all. (2000, 11; original emphasis)
While Nancy’s argument is developed at an ontological
level, his propositions resonate with themes evident
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
in geographies of hatred and exclusion, such as the
attempted annihilation of gypsies (Sibley 1995), and
with those critiquing panics or political ‘solutions’
surrounding feared Others – for example, the historic
racialisation of Chinese, or the eviction of the home-
less (Anderson 1988; Smith 1993). Seeking meaning of
existence in the other is a more challenging approach
requiring each being to reconceptualise existence as
‘being-with’ – self and ‘other’ – that is, ‘an ontology of
being-with-one-another’. Such an approach supports
alternatives to the processes by which ‘Others’ are
constructed, but also challenges both popular and
policy discourses committed to common-being
constructions of community and collectives.
Imagining new geographies of singularity
and collectives
Linking a challenging ontological position to the way
beings live everyday life is a demanding undertaking.
Nevertheless, we are interested to consider the role
human geographers might play in this process and,
perhaps more selfishly, what human geographers
might gain by such engagement. We support Nancy’s
own project (to point to the dangers of common-
being constructions of community and to gesture
towards an improvement in being-to-being behaviour
that might result from wider acceptance that being
involves ‘being-with’). In determining the form of
that support, we suggest the adoption of a pragmatic
position based on the following assumptions. Firstly,
Nancy’s take on the meaning of existence will not
readily find its way into popular discourses because
of the intellectual challenges it involves. Secondly,
for the reasons outlined earlier in this paper,
popular invoking of common-being community will
continue. Thirdly, while policy formulators are
aware of the practical problems that arise when
using community as a vehicle for policy implement-
ation (and have an ambivalent view of community
as a result), they do not yet have access to theory
that explains this troubled relationship. Finally,
theoretically informed policy is more likely to meet
its objectives.
For human geography, the challenge is to position
itself so that it can constructively critique policy
predicated on problematic and illusory notions of
‘common-being’ community; to do this via rigorous
theorisation and empirical exploration of the way
beings engage with collectives. In this final section
of the paper, we ponder what might constitute some
Nancian-informed geographies. We highlight a selection
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 Questioning community as a collective antidote to fear 353
of the conceptual and methodological opportunities
that arise in imagining how geographies of ‘being
singular plural’ might be proposed, undertaken and
placed in dialogue with other contemporary per-
spectives in geography.6
Unravelling ‘belonging’ and the myth of
‘common being’
Nancy’s theorising does not propose an uncompli-
cated intellectual and practical human engagement
with collectives. Instead it challenges the fiction and
excesses of common-being and the exclusive ideal
of ‘belonging’ for some and not others. This resonates
with geographers’ critiques of exclusive constructions
of place, community and identity where excesses of
ostracism and prejudice flow over the experiences
of (and access to) specific places and resources (for
example, Dunn 2005; Hubbard 2005a). In contrast
to exclusive communities, to which many clearly
aspire to belong, Nancy’s work suggests all beings
are included in the ‘human community’ because
‘Being’ has no meaning other than ‘being together
with other beings’. A being, together with all ‘other’
beings, constitutes the macro collective. Potentially,
there is comfort for each being because it suggests
an ultimate human inclusivity. But it is also a
challenge, for it exposes and emphasises the diversity
and existential qualities of singularity (i.e. not only
the plurality of singularity but also the distance and
difference between beings). In short, this macro
collective is too inclusive for membership to be an
antidote to singularity and, as a consequence accord-
ing to Nancy, beings seek to negotiate membership
of exclusive ‘communities’, even though such com-
munities can provide only partial and ephemeral
relief from anxiety about singularity. This tendency
to defer consideration of the inevitability that is the
finitude of existence, and to continually recreate
communities that have limited shelf-life and capacity
to console, clearly needs to be factored into our
theorising of human interactions and constructions.
A first objective of new geographies of singularity
and collectivity is to document and constantly chal-
lenge where and how the constructions of ‘belonging’
and ‘common-being community’ are attempted.7
One set of possibilities is provided when consider-
ing how marginalisation and prejudice occur in
association with Othered cultures (McLaughlin
1998; Hubbard 2005b; Neal and Agyeman 2006). If
Nancy’s attention to ‘being singular plural’ and the
‘alterity of the other’ is engaged in such cases, then
new critical geographies are possible. Nancian
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informed geographies of those currently identified
and ostracised as ‘Others’ (the alien, the threatening
and the out-of-place) could re-class such groups as
‘other’ – ‘“one” among many . . . one among us all’
(Nancy 2000, 11; original emphasis). Documenting
experiences of ‘among’ and ‘with’ (based on ‘singular
plural’ ideas of being) could provide avenues for
moving from Nancy’s philosophical arena to empir-
ical and policy realms; moving in a shift away from
the inequalities of alien-ness to the potential of
alterity. Geographers might lead the way in showing
how this reframing of others can underpin different
policy responses to groups such as travellers, ethnic
‘minorities’ and asylum seekers.
The potential – and policy implications – of
social collectives
Adopting a Nancian perspective does not neces-
sarily require a rejection of collectives based on the
notion of common-being (even though such collectives
can generate ‘inhuman’ actions). Rather, it is the
belief that stable, workable collectives can be
constructed on the basis of common-being that is
wrong and needs to be challenged.8 Because of
geographers’ capacity to demonstrate the spatiality
of social relations and struggles, we have the
potential to inform policy concerning the tactics,
shortcomings and instabilities of strategic construc-
tions of common-being collectives. The opportunity
to illustrate the policy (and empirical) limits of
employing social units of analysis predicated on
commonality or homogeneity is one potentially
fertile area of work (Dunn 2004; Chan 2006).
Another lies in the opportunity to work with social
policy and community development specialists to
support populations to grasp the principle that
being-in-common is the only collective state that
can be realised, and to explore with them the ways
in which collectives can be established that directly
and effectively reflect this reality.
Such options will not be easy for they expose a
being to (or require the being to acknowledge) the
singular nature of being – the avoidance of which
knowledge is the very reason for the establishment
of collectives on the (would-be) basis of common-
being. The wider adoption of a Nancian perspective
requires a fundamental re-evaluation of what it means
‘to be’ – in singular-being and collective forms. As
Nancy notes, however, the recent deconstruction of
many of the collective, directional structures that
guided humans in the twentieth century has created
the challenging, even scary, but also creative (mental
354 Welch and Panelli
and organisational) space for this to occur. Geography,
with its substantial number of scholars interested in
participatory and action-oriented critical praxis, may
well be able to generate both practical and conceptu-
ally coherent responses to such opportunities, and in
ways that are both locally place-effective and suffici-
ently generic in effect to inform other policy arenas
and populations interested in adapting new collective
forms to their own specific contexts (cf. Fuller and
Kitchin 2004; Pain 2004 2006; Ruddick 2004).
Considering spaces of affect and emotion
A third geographical agenda drawing on Nancy’s
thinking resonates with recent geographic writing on
affect and emotion. We suggest these works could
usefully intersect with Nancy’s consideration of ‘with’
and the ‘spacing’, ‘connection’ and ‘between-ness’
discussed earlier. For example, Thrift’s focus on a
‘politics of affect’ suggests one way Nancian-inspired
geographies might develop where politics (and
democracy) are imagined as a ‘process of com-
munity without unity’ (Thrift 2004, 57, 68). Thrift
examines the spatial politics of affect in a manner
that complements some of the ideas developed by
Nancy, and outlined above. In their different ways,
both Nancy and Thrift have placed emotion centre
stage. The former has shown that much emotion
results from the human struggle to come to terms
with experiences of singularity, whereas the latter has
illustrated how affect is ‘systematically engineered’
to achieve particular political effect in ‘Euro-American’
cities (see also Thrift 2005). Much of Thrift’s exposition,
notwithstanding its gravitas, reads emotion as a
given – to be identified and manipulated by political
beings. Its origins are less considered. We suggest
that further analysis based on Nancy’s theorising of
‘being singular plural’ would enhance analysis of
the way affect is politically manipulated by theorising
a common (if not universal) basis for anxieties
experienced by human beings. Thrift (2005) alerts
us to the need to critically question economies of
fear and hatred, and to consider the possibilities of
‘affective display’, ‘friendship’ and ‘compassion’. If
this is undertaken in conjunction with a Nancian
appreciation of ‘singular plurality’ and the multiple
experiences of ‘being with’, diverse, effective and
affective cartographies could result.
Another complementary example is provided by
Ben Anderson’s work on affect and hope. While
coming from a quite different theoretical perspe-
ctive, Anderson’s (2006) attention to ‘how hope
takes place’ and ‘how bodies become hopeful’ is
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
helpful if as geographers we wish to think about
how people experience (and respond to) singularity
and about their drive to seek ‘community’. Concepts
of hope provide one lens through which this work
might develop; supporting, for example, the map-
ping of how experiences of both ‘being’ and ‘hope’
take place and how ‘bodies’ and other spaces are
involved. Anderson’s nuanced account of hope
(including the injustices that can be perpetrated in
its name) points to the dynamism and ‘fluctuations’
of everyday life, and we would argue that Nancy’s
thinking provides a way to chart the dynamics of
being (singular plural) and encounter (of self and
other). Just as Anderson (2006) argues that hope is
vital for radical new forms of obligation and promise,
we would suggest that the traction and tension
(bridging and exposing) that occurs in ‘being singular
plural’ is vital to mobilising emotion and politicising
affect for constructive ends.
Reconceptualising researcher–researched
relations and actions: methodological implications
for the design and practice of geography
Finally, Nancy’s critique of the excesses and abuses
of community as common-being provides new insight
into questions about relations between researchers
and researched populations. When research addresses
groups as common-beings in diverse, ‘authentic’,
possibly even ‘stable’ or ‘unified’ forms (e.g. a
community, a specific set of workers, a particular
demographic group), the role of the researcher as
‘outsider’ always raises the challenge of researcher-
effect in relation to the status of any field data
collected. Put another way, researchers may never
see, nor understand, a collective other than as they
attempt to perceive it – as a unity of common-being.
They, along with beings attempting to form a
nostaligic communion, perpetuate the homogenising
‘community’ Nancy finds so problematic.
Alongside feminist and participatory critiques of
such crises of objectivity and essentialism, however,
a Nancian-informed consideration of research can
mobilise a different methodological opportunity
based on understandings of ‘being singular plural’
and being-in-common. The researcher–researched
relationship assumes a quite different character.
The researched becomes one other being (from the
wider collective of singular plural beings) and the
researcher’s actions involve the navigation of diverse
contracts surrounding beings-in-common. Some
earlier critiques of ‘insider/outsider’ experiences and
the multiple positionality of researchers (England
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 Questioning community as a collective antidote to fear 355
1994; Rose 1997b) touch on parallel challenges,
and scholars interested in feminist and participatory
approaches have already written at length on com-
plementary issues (e.g. Pratt 2004). However, research
designed in awareness of being singular plural
opens up opportunities for negotiating ‘being with’,
‘connection’ and ‘between-ness’ (as well as the more
familiar human geography notions of difference,
identity, inter-action and politics) in the generation of
knowledge. What we are proposing also complements
calls for critical, progressive, policy-influencing and
hope-filled geographies (Thrift 2004; Anderson
2006; Pain 2006). With the aid of Nancy’s work, we
have the opportunity to: chart the dynamics of being
singular plural; to critique the tensions and tractions
of daily lives; to imagine new landscapes of con-
nection (that respect distance); and to formulate
new politics of ‘being with’ (that does not require
sameness). We look forward to seeing how others
(being-in-common in their regard for what geography
may yet be) will make of our thoughts.
Acknowledgements
We thank Alistair Bonnett and two anonymous referees for
constructive criticism and thought on a previous version of
this paper.
Notes
1 Common being denotes the problem Nancy (1991, xxxix)
identifies in most notions of community when ‘The
community . . . becomes a single thing (body, mind,
fatherland . . . ) . . . [and] loses the with or the together
that defines it. It yields its being-together to a being of
togetherness’.
2 Nancy’s work is diverse, engaging with a wide range of
thinkers (e.g. Hegel, Lacan, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger)
and inspiring others (e.g. Lacoue-Labarthe 1997; Derrida
2005). His foci include the troubling of ‘community’,
‘being’ and ‘the divine’, as well as an interest in painting
and film. While his ideas are engaged by others working in
philosophy, film and literature, and women’s studies (e.g.
Luszcczynska 2005; Perpich 2005; Britton 2006), his sig-
nificance for our thinking lies in the way he combines both
ontological questions and broad-scale political worries
(see, for example, Dallmayr 1997).
3 The notion of ‘being in common’ highlights both connection
and spacing of beings (discussed below) in comparison
with the concept of ‘common being’ (note #1), which
omits the sense of singular beings in a bid to construct and/
or claim a closed, single, common sense.
4 That is, the ontological possibility of ‘entering into mean-
ing’ (Nancy 2000, 10).
Area Vol. 39 No. 3, pp. 349–356, 2007
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Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
5 Including, for example, the recognition that entities such
as family, home and neighbourhood are by no means
always safe collectives (e.g. Warrington 2001).
6 Making a selection of the many avenues that could be
proposed in this section was impossibly vexed and we are
all too conscious that our presentation of only four themes
here overlooks all manner of other possibilities, for example:
the implications of ‘being in common’ or ‘being singular
plural’ that might inform geographies of the body, of iden-
tity politics and performance, of indigenous place–culture
relations, and of posthuman futures. We continue to work
on these possibilities and note the diverse engagements
Nancy’s work inspires in other disciplines (Secomb 2000;
Perpich 2005; Derrida 2005; Luszczynska 2005; Britton
2006).
7 We acknowledge that this type of critique is already being
effectively completed by many geographers working in dif-
ferent settings but wish to emphasize the ongoing need to
unsettle the idealisation of community as common being,
and to point to the futility of notions of belonging that build
connection between select populations while attempting to
defend a ‘unity’ of commonality that excludes and ostracises.
8 Indeed, as other geographies of community have shown,
common-being collectives that seek to understate or cam-
ouflage internal difference are artificial (even artifices) and
politically negotiated. Their members are responsible for
decisions made by/on behalf of the collective.
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