Foreward

Christopher Fynsk argues that understanding Nancy's work hinges on an understanding of a

practice of reading. Following Heidegger, understanding the present - a time that can no longer be
understood teleologically or in relation to a fundamental scheme - requires a consideration of
philosophy's closure. For Heidegger, reaching the end of metaphysics required repeating the
movements that lead to its end. Nancy builds on this by arguing that this act itself can never be
completed, and itself requires repetition. The deconstructionist methodology can be seen here, as it
problematizes the foundations of this act. Just as justice in Derrida's Force of Law can never be
achieved and is only a sign post we can and must work towards, we can never fully trace the path that
lead to the end of philosophy. It has occurred or can possibly occur, but we can never understand why
by mapping, or know when it happened. We can never fully reach an ideal order of meaning.
Central to Nancy's work is the notion of difference. He argues that many of the notions of
philosophy speak in imperatives from models that are no longer viable. This is what marks the end of
philosophy. Yet, for Nancy the end of history does not mark the end of trout, but rather requires
thought. Perhaps this means new models must be created. In line with deconstruction, though, it would
mean an acceptance of these models' problematic nature while still using them. The relationship
between this and difference is as follows. We must rethink our history of existence, and this requires an
understanding of the nitude of Being. The nitude of Being is understood as a difference from
historicity; that is, from our historically dened existence. From this we must rethink a number of
concepts. This engenders difference, as it contrasts the history of concepts with the concepts as subject
in our rethinking.
This requires a gesture of thought, which returns us to the themes of discourse concerned with
politics or to the concepts of our social existence. These are freedom and community. These have
become abstract through their philosophical presuppositions. This is s return to the foundations, and we
are changing them akin to the decentering seen in Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse
of The Human Sciences." The centre is problematized. Philosophical discourse has not provided a
meaning that holds for social practice. Yet we are unable to do without them. Justice and community
are currently empty meanings, yet they are still central. The gesture confronts this haunting. Fynsk
argues that Nancy is a labourer of concepts, creating a conceptual model only to turn it inside out
hoping to expose the limit. I see this related to the idea of tracing the movements of the end of history
at the beginning of the sections. Justice and freedom are not new concepts. He recreates them, albeit in
a new way, only to reveal the problematic nature. Instead of creating new models that are problematic,
he creates models that reveal the inherent problematics. This is an act of force. It pushes the concepts
into marking both the bridge and the gap between his concepts and the philosophical discourse. This is
a bridge between the political (the site where what it means to be in common is open up to denition)
and politics (play of forces and interests engaged in conict over representation and governance of a
social existence). This is indicative of the difference between the ontic (facts relating to existence) and
the ontological in Heidegger, which forces us to think in terms of difference. This means the political
and politics are marked by a relationship of difference. This cannot be represented in any model,
including a polis or state.
This makes it difcult to frame what the political means for Nancy. The by we can do is engage
in critiques of ideology that are characteristic of the absence of community. This doesn't mark a
paralysis of politics but a demand for a political response. I see a similarity with Heidegger here. The
political is not a denition but a response or action. Similarly, Heidegger uses invoking language to
make you realize a concept instead of explaining it. We must also rethink political practice, and this
requires a consideration of the practice of writing.

Nancy's practice of writing is a reference to language. Rethinking the practice of writing is to

rethink the language of the tradition. In this vein, Nancy is trying to expose what still "speaks" in a
term like community when we assume the closure of the metaphysics of subjectivity. What remains of
community when there is no fundamental nature to subjectivity? The metaphysics of subjectivity were
what heralded representation and signification.
Nancy argues that the concept of freedom recedes in Heidegger's thinking until it is abandonned
and replaced with the notion of "the free." This marks a shift from being a trait of existence to a trait of
Being that in its freedom gives a relation to what is in a movement of withdrawal, and by a movement
of withdrawal. One is free in withdrawing from existence. Perhaps this refers to a freedom by not being
confined by the perimiters of immanent ontology.The emphasis is put on the subject who takes part in
ontology, as Heidegger argues being requires humankind.Nancy argues that Being has a multiple and
differential character. Being is never singular and can never be One. It can also, however, not be
thought of as a simple gathering or collecting. Instead, it is something differential or relational. This
opens the question of the implications of thius thought for poliutics and ethics. It recognizes that the
experience of freedom is inseperable from a political passion. The experience of freedom and
experience of the community are experiences of the real. He deconstructs the individual and the
subject's presence to itself to point to a singularity of the self that knows itself as opening to alterity.
This means that the notion of difference returns here as, by opening itself to alterity, subjectivity is only
understood in terms of difference. Freedom becomes a name for ecstasis, or an exposure of thought to
the fact of Being.
The subject of freedom emerges in its freedom, and in the sense of freedom. Freedom is an
event, and only through it can freedom be assumed or affirmed through this event. This event is central.
The subject only comes to itself in its freedom; freedom is the birth of the subject. Yet the limits of
subjectivity must also be thought of, as the knowledge of mortality is tied to the experience of a birth.
The finitude of Being is that one realizes the limits of mortality. The death of the other calls the subject
beyond itself and thus delivers it to its freedom. We only realize we are free when we are aware of that
which is outside of us; freedom is understood as outside of the border, not within. Freedom is shared,
and the experience of other's mortality constitutes something like a condition of this sharing.
The individual Dasein knows community first through the imposibility of communion or
immance (which is the self-presence of individuals to one another in and by their community) before
the dead other. In capitalist-productive society, death is an experience that a collectivity cannot make its
work or property. We cannot represent it, and this exposes us to our finitude by breaching the
possibility of self-presentation. It is something that is not of the self, yet cannot be appropriated as it
has reached its finitude. Yet the experience of death is not solely the experience of the dead other. It is
also the experience of Dasein's own mortality. The relationship to difference here is that death is the
different to existence, just as the other is to the subject. The relationship with mortality is a relationship
of difference. This seizes us and puts us beyond ourselves. It is important to remember Nancy's
distinction between the inside and outside of a border here. In "Shattered Love," Nancy speaks of a
cutting across that opens us up to that which is outside of us. This is the case here. Fynsk defines this as
a moment of intimacy that constitutes our own existence by experiencing the existence of the other. Yet
Nancy tries to dissociate love from an experience of communion, as this is not a relationship of
communion with itself (self love) or with another between individuals or in a community at large. This
is because it is beyond the self. The subject finds itself in love beyond itself. Because it is not situated
within itself, the self cannot be engaged in a relationship with the other to form communion. Yet the
other is still central. To be a subject in love is to be exposed to the other, and opening this exposure
more and more until the subject is "trembling on the edge of being;" it is so defined by its relation to
the other it risks ceasing to exist in itself. Love comes and goes, compelling the self to offer itself only
to leave. It is only known through shards that remain in the passing. They are shards because it strikes
us. Love is therefore an encounter and a relation. Community is tied to this cutting open to the outside.

It renders the political as we are share our exposure to each other.

Meaning is material for Nancy. It is based on the fact of freedom as an experience. This
materiality takes us in the direction of politics. Materiality is thus the origin of language (remember
that language, writing, and politics/political are part of the same gesture). It is a communication of
force of the difference of forces that articulates a communitary meaning of Being. This requires an
understanding of the material grounds of representation as being in some sense of language. Language
is material insofar that it is not metaphysical; it is tangible and exists in actualized life. It is also how
we are able to understand any given thing, and thus gives us access to the essence of logos, and logos in
its access to essence.
Logos comes about only as it is articulated by thought, drawing out the opening of a relation to
what is. This draws out the difference that logos is exposed to. This articulates difference as something
that separates or divides. Thought articulates the other of thought. The "other" thought is a thought that
measures thought. It is an always singular gesture that opens only in and by thought. The experience of
the "other" thought is the experience of freedom. It is also the experience of language which defines
logos in its access to its essence, that is, the speaking of language; the meaning that language conveys.
Logos is always divided and shared, and is characterized by a radical historicity in that its always
singular articulations never voice the same origin. This makes them divided as they do not share this
origin. Yet, they are still articulations of the same. This stems from the multifaceted-ness of Nancy's
reading of ontology.
There is a voice of community. It announces a law, and this is the logos of the community. Yet
this voice is always divided from itself and is always different. It exists only in the communications,
which are singular acts by which Dasein sets out difference in the accomplishment of freedom. Logos
of the community is always different, therefore, because it is inherently a relationship of difference.
This means that being in a community is always an experience of being in relationship to different
modes of difference to ourselves. This is, however, an accomplishment of freedom. Every free act
communicates or "speaks" as an answer to the logos. To me, I think the difference emerges here in the
fact that ontology is constantly unfolding, and we must answer to these categories - such as the law - as
sign posts even though the definition would constantly change in the face of the evolving ontology.
Community is a differential relation of singular beings. It is prior to what Nancy calls the
division of voices. This is because community is prior to voice in any linguistic sense. It emerges at the
opening of the possibility of signification that is the access of logos to its essence. Therefore,
community emerges before logos can communicate the law. Community is the beginning of what
allows logos to communicate a law. This makes community a transcendental condition of language, and
the event of this opening is prior to speech. This makes community deconstructable, as it is prior to
conceptualization.
When voice does emerge, the otherness of the voice is the always different voice of community.
Given the link between language and community, community is therefore always different. We must
continue to write the community, for Nancy. This presupposes that, despite its perenial difference, it is
something that can be communicated nonetheless. Even though community lay at the beginning of
language, it is defined as something laying at the limits of language, and is always of language. Without
this, there would be no need to write and no way to write it. What this means is that the essence of
language exists in community, and it becomes actualized when community emerges. It is what
language is made of. Therefore, we can use language to define community and to engage with
community. We must write community because it exceeds signification. We must therefore work
towards reaching its meaning - just like law in Derrida's Force of Law. It is only a possibility of
signification that always escapes representation or any theoretical grasp. All that is known is the
working towards community. This requires a theoretical discussion that would point beyond itself, and
the politics of discourse go beyond any understanding of a "politics" of this discourse. This other
politics is understood as what facilitates the writing of the community; this is called literary

communism. It is a kind of cultural politics, though it doesn't seek a reflection or representation of itself
in the creative acts it seeks to favour. Its aim is to answer an unforeseeable event that escapes any
instituted order of meaning and constitutes the site where the question of the very meaning of political
existence is reoppened. This politics seeks to answer to the limit of the political. The cultural politics
would seek to let the unworking communication of community occur, or prevent its inhibition.
In his definition of community, Nancy seeks to avoid speaking of a politics and aims to redefine
the nature of the political and what would constitute the "political" moment. A politics of community is
possible because community demands it, and this creates a "prescription" that makes all writing
political. Therefore, insofar that community precedes language, writing/utilizing language strives
towards an answer to politics when it exists as a question. There is no definition of politics, only a
question.
All that is said in our time is the absence of community. It seems paradoxical that community
not exist when it precedes language. It is because community has been dissolved that it is absent. This
emerges because the logos of community is divided. Given that community is imbedded in difference,
it is a paradox. How can we be a community when we are different? It is because the unheard in
community demands a testimony of this time. Yet as the world is constantly changing, this is not an
achievable goal. Community therefore dissolves after logos emerges. Because civilization always has
language, community perhaps never existed.
Nancy defines this as a literature in order to argue that this communication does not pass
through myth. The mythic is the space of communion, and community is not communion. Communion
is joining together while community is rooted in difference. Community interrupts the myth. The myth
is a logos found in the divine. It is an alternative to community insofar that it is a union of subjects
under the rubric of God. Myth conveys the divine, writing conveys community. Implicit in Nancy's
work is the absence of both. Community is always yet to come, and so is the divine. We are offered up
to both and exposed to both only to have it pass us by.

Preface
The texts in The Inoperative Community speak to a convergence of the political instead of just
being a collection of essays. They come from the left, which means, at the very least, that they are
receptive to what is at stake in community. The political refers to the place where community is
brought into play. This distinguishes political from modes of conception where it is simply the locus of
power relations, though these are important. Instead, it speaks to a broadly pervasive sense of
consensus. Instead of economic and technical forces, democracy refers to a being-in-common that
gives rise to being-self. The political thus takes place outside of the context of power relations that
normally are thought to constitute politics, and instead the political takes place within the realm of our
ontology. The former concept serves only economic and technical sources, thus destroying the true
democracy - presumably because it prevents us from being-in-common as these fields are contentious
instead of consensual.
Community is the place where we be-in-common. We are brought into the world both incommon with others and as ourselves. This makes sense; We are never detached from the world around
us. Being-in-common is not added to our being-self, but rather the two are co-originary and
coextensive.
This creates a subjectivity where we can be exposed, which means to be posed in exterority and
according to an exterority, but this posing takes place outside an intimacy of the inside. This speaks to
the affect or feeling of exteriority; we feel exposed as it takes us away from the intimacy of the inside.
Nancy notes the root of polis in the term political. Drawing on Aristotle, he argues we live in
cities as it is the political way of life. We do so, not out of need, but for a higher reason to live well that

is inscribed according to logos defined as that whose worth lies in being exposed. If logos is being
exposed, this ties back to the abandonment by God, as logos is the divine reason traditionally. This
means that being exposed relates to immanence; it pervades over all and is higher reason itself. Yet to
be exposed is not simply a wound. It also means to exist in being shared. We do not lose our being as
we fall victim to the outside, but rather in the outside/community aspects of our being are shared and
form a collective being-in-common.
Traditional configurations of the political only speak to the realization of a particular essene of
community. The point of The Inoperable Community is to speak to their closure. This is often called the
end of ideology, and the end of political options as it substitutes the consensus of democracy. Thinking,
for Nancy, marks the end of thought. The reason for this is because, with thought, something is
postulated instead of being-in-common. Perhaps this means that it is postulated individually through the
cogito instead of in the community, or, that by postulating something is applied to community or
community is molded in a particular way instead of this postulate-idea originally existing in-common.
Finitude makes community. Finitude is the infinite lack of an infinite identity (or, immanent
identity. See the abandonment of God in later chapters). Community is thus formed by the retreat or
subtraction of something. It is known through what it does not do and what it is not. We therefore exist
in-common not in terms of what is shared among us, but what we lack in-common. This includes the
lack of God, as community does't fall under the rubrick of a being who is immanent to community. This
makes community hard to define... because it is definitionless. The ideas are present that allow us to fit
together the concept of community, but the pieces lack meaning as they are characterized only by what
they are not instead of what they are.
This is the reverse of totalitarianism, which is a politics that stems from the will to realize an
essence. If we be-in-common in a positive sense, that is of shared trait, then it holds totality over our
ontology. Perhaps this is a locus of power that restricts the ways in which we can be. If we think of
historical regimes of totalitarianism, we can see a guiding principle that governed all. It follows from
Nancy that we can see aspects of this in current regimes of power, even though we do not nescessarily
think of them as totalitarian. A politics that avoids this trap can only be seen as moments, points, or
events of being-in-common. These are moments of disjuncture, where what is shared is something in
the negative: an interruption, a lack, the moment of something shattering.
The meaning of this comes down to the question of how, given all of this, we communicate.
Normally we may think of communication as a desire for a consensus, continuity and a transfer of
messages. This must be rejected, and communication becomes an exposition, wherein a finite existence
is exposed to finite existence, meaning it is the moment of realizing limitations. At the limit is the
potential for revolution, which is the idea of a new foundation or a reversal of sovereignty. Therefore,
there are gestures of both foundation and reversal in communication.
This entails a mode of thought that is required, least we lose the political in the same way we
have lost the divine.

The Inoperative Community

[Each paragraph correlates to a section]
The dissolution of the community is the gravest issue of modern world. Communism stood as
an emblem of this fact, yet it has ultimately failed as a true communist ideal seems less and less
tenable. The fault of communism was in viewing individuals ontologically as workers who are tied to
their work and productive power and created a community as such. Yet there has been no true

communist/communitarian opposition that has not been subjugated to the notion of producing a
community tied to the essence of humanness through an immanence of man. [This means that the
community has been cast in such a manner where it becomes the task of its members to produce the
ontological essence of what it means to be human (a subject). This is, in effect, the philosophical
mechanics of actualized Communism insofar that communism is this applied to a production of class
essence.] We can call this totalitarianism or immanentism.
The individual (both as human subject and collective totality) is the residue of experiencing the
community's dissolution as is apparent in it's name. The individual is the origin of its own death
insofar that it is a product [and act] of decomposition. This is seen in the fact it is like an atom, and a
world cannot be composed of atoms on their own; they must combine. Therefore, there has to be an
inclination, and community is the inclination of the individual. However, the metaphysics of the subject
casts the individual as absolute: this means, it exists without relation to anything. This separates it from
others as the individual becomes self inclosed. Nancy argues this is impossible because absolute
requires its capacity to be absolute to be absolute itself. Attacking this conception of the individual can
not be alone, but must be alone in being alone. Yet this does not exist the individual is not alone in the
world. Therefore, community cuts into this notion of the subject and sets it into relation. Because there
cannot be relations of absolutes, the community becomes an act of undoing; undoing absolute
immanence. This turns the act of being into being-in-relation. Community thus becomes a question of
being other than an absoluteness of being.
Singularity is the opposite of individualism and the absolute, and is never found in the argument
of the individual. It is the singular as relation to others. In this regard, it is constitutive of the
community and lies at the clinamen.
Ecstasy is at the crux of community. It is neglected in individualism, yet it is not a simple
symmetry as immanence and ecstasy both appear in communism. Aesthetic, literary, and thought
pursuits are the exegencies (urgencies, demands) of ecstasy and enact a mode of communication, and
thus the community is grounded in the aesthetic or literary work. All aspects of the community
(ethics, politics, philosophies) are an act of speaking the community. Instead of marking a return to the
republic of artists seen in Jena romanticism, this is a community that effectuates itself in the absolute of
the work and itself as the work. In order for the question to be introduced into distributions of space, its
terms must be transformed. Therefore, a redistribution of space requires the question of the work. This
becomes manifest through the notion of communism. While communism was once argued by Sartre to
be on the horizon, it is no longer so. This is not because we have surpassed that horizon, but rather that
the horizon itself has changed. Horizons must be challenged. Community traces different lines in which
we must go farther than all horizons.
The first part of this is to challenge the horizon behind us, that is, the breakdown of community
which has allegedly engendered the modern era. This thought begins with Rousseau who conceived of
a society that acknowledged the loss of a communitarian intimacy with the intention of creating a
citizen of a free and sovereign community. Society (an association and division of forces and needs) is
thus an experienced as an uneasiness towards community, and is a position adopted by Hegel and the
Romantics. In short: history has been thought of on the basis of a lost community defined as intimate
communication between its members and communion with its own essence. Yet this community has
never existed, and the mourning of its loss can be seen dating back to the departure of Odysseus. In this
sense, the presence of this community lay outside of history and in the divine. The consciousness of the
loss of community can be understood as communion, wherein one partakes in divine life through the
end of the heart of Christ's mystical body. Therefore, the loss of community may be a mourning of the
retreating of the divine from immanence, that is, a retreat of the divine from the encompassing of the
material world. Community is thus the limit of society and the human. Because consciousness has not
reached the boundaries of all possible experience, community has not taken place. Society takes the
place of something that we have no name for that requires a form of communication greater than a

social bond. What this was is unclear. Society is built on something that is not community. Therefore,
community has not been lost.
Community has lost something only insofar that loss is constitutive of community itself. When
people argue that community has loss something, it is the immanence and intimacy of a communion.
However, this is not a loss as immanence instantly suppresses community or communication; it is the
loss itself. In this regard, immanence leads to death, or the decomposition back into nature by marking
the end of communication for identity of atomic pieces. Any enterprise that is dominated by a will to
absolute immanence is founded on the logic of suicide of the community governed by it. This leads to
suicide for the sake of the community. This ties the immanence of death to the immanence of love, and
reflects back to the mytho-literary trope of the suicidal lovers: one is the Christian communion and the
other is the community thought according to this principle of love. An example of this was seen in Nazi
Germany, which was founded not only on the extermination of the other but the notion of sacrifice
aimed at those in the Aryan community who did not meet the qualifications for pure immanence. This
enacted the suicide of the German state. With death in the community of pure immanence, it is
imagined that one's death will be reabsorbed into the community (dying for one's country), but this
cannot be attained through the remoteness of community and its status of yet to come. Instead, death
reveals community by crystallizing around the loss of its members, and thus, the possibility of
immanence [ they are related because this is a loss instead of joining members of community]. Death
exceeds the metaphysics of the subject, because the I cannot exist to say it is dead. Therefore, death
puts the subject outside itself. Following this it becomes clear that community is not the weaving
together of a superior or transmortal life between subjects that would be seen in the transfiguration of
the dead subject into a communal intimacy of the homeland or native soil. Instead, Community is
calibrated on making a work out of this moment of experiencing death of the subject; that is, the
presentation of the I's (experienced as others) mortal truths.
Georges Bataille offers insight into the experience of modern destiny of community. His
account emerged out of the exigency of the communism's betrayal. His thought contains two
tendencies: first, a desire to give revolt back its incandescence stolen by the Bolshevik revolt, and
second, a disgust towards fascism. Fascism too was a response to society, and is the grotesque
resurgence of an obsession with communion and a nostalgia crystalized around the loss of its images.
Bataille realized the nostalgia for a communal being is a nostalgia for the work of death. It is a
headlong rush into immanence. The nostalgia for communion is a feverish Rousseauism In it,
sacrifice and expenditure are only simulations if they fall short of the work of death. But also, the
simulation is accomplished through a form of domination, oppression, and extermination that all sociopolitical systems finally lead. For Bataille, the reversal of the nostalgia for a lost community is an
inner experience in which sovereignty becomes the nothing, i.e sovereignty becomes the sovereign
exposure to an excess. This is the opposite of the subject's movement towards the limits of nothingness.
It is the is not in Heidegger. This inner experience is not interior or subjective, instead, it is being
outside itself. Bataille reveals that modern community is not a work to be produced or a lost
communion, but a space, and a space where the outside-of-self becomes spaced. This leads to an
experience of the clear consciousness where immanence can never be regained. This can only take
place in the community, for clear consciousness is ecstasy, and thus never mine but can only be
realized through community [note that ecstasy is communication]. This is not a collective unconscious
because it pertains not to the self. Community is outside of the self and thus is not a subject greater than
the myself. Community is the ecstatic consciousness of immanence's end and interruption of selfconsciousness.
Bataille knew that what exceeds a connection between ecstasy and community is the areality
(nature as area, as formed space) of ecstasy. The form of an ecstasy is a community. Bataille remained
stuck between the two poles, and thus enacts a resistance to this fusion. He was unable to reconcile
community which for him was communism bound up with notions of justice and equality and

ecstasy tied to the sovereingty of lovers and artistry, which he construed as inherently private.
However, this act of resistance seen in Bataille is a being-in-common, and without it we would not be
in common for very long as we quickly become realized in a unique and total being of immanence.
Bataille soon dismisses the possibility of community when he sees communication of each being with
nothing begins to replace communication between beings due to the distressed world in which we
live, seeing the death of community replaced with conflagration of ecstasy. However, the contemporary
area has an unprecedented amount of new ways of being-in-common. It becomes a task of thinking the
unheard demands of community. It has an exegency that has yet to be discovered. However, this is not
an act of deliberation, as the thinking subject thwarts the community. Bataille gave up thinking the
shared dasein, but we aught to think of how subjects are constituted by sharing that spaces them as
others. Where Bataille places the subject and communication, we instead find community and sharing.
By revealing one's birth and one's death, sharing reveals that one's existence is outside itself.
Community is just this exposition, thus making it a community of finite beings and subsequently a
finite community. Being-in-common does not refer to a higher form or substance that takes charge of
different individualities [thus an avoidance of immanence]. However, the singular being which is not
the individual is the finite being. The individual comes short in realizing a singularity, as
individuation is a detaching process, separating the object from a formless ground. Communication
constitutes the being of the individual (something outside itself). Singularity does not proceed from
anything, and is not a work, and the ground is the finitude of singularities. Singular beings appear as
finitude itself instead of rising up against the background of an undifferentiated identity of beings.
Community means that there cannot exist a singular being without there existing another singular
being. Therefore, an ontological sociality whose principle exists beyond the theme of man as a social
being (zoon politikon) exists. The finitude apparent in this community is nothing, neither a ground,
essence, or substance. Finite beings always present themselves together as finitude presents itself in
the being-in-common. The finite being exists only by exposing it to n outside, and this outside is the
exposition of another areality or singularity of the same other. Communication is an exposition to this
outside that defines singularity. Community exists as the carrying out of a triple mourning of the death
of the other, my birth, and my death; these place the subject outside itself. A laceration consists in the
exposure of the inside of the singular being to the outside. The open mouth, it must be noted, is not a
laceration as we do not become exposed to the outside through the mouth, as words do not come from
the throat but through the manipulation of the mouth. The mouth is not outside itself. Thus, silence
the lack of the mouth's movements is not a form of communication but communication itself.
Because this cannot form a bond, there is a desire for recognition. However, before recognition can
emerge, the knowledge that I am exposed to the other is required.
Community cannot arise from the domain of work, for it is not something that one produces.
Instead, one is constituted by it. Instead, it takes place in the unwork described by Blanchot, which
precedes and goes beyond work to an area not concerned with production or completion. This unwork
takes place in what Bataille termed the scared, which is the unleashing of passions. This unleashing of
passions enacts a movement of a free subjectivity towards the sovereign destruction of all things in
moving toward a consumption of the nothing. The passion that is unleashed is the passion of
singularity, which is communicated and contagious, sharing its singularity. This is the grounding for the
inoperative community. Whereas the individual knows another individual, the singular being
experiences its likeness to the other. This is the passion of singularity, which is being. This like-being
reveals sharing, though I only become enjoined into the community through the death of the other. The
I doesn't recognize itself in the death, however, the death exposes it. The like-being resembles me
insofar that I resemble it. Thus, community is an ontological order where the other and the same are
alike.
We cannot state that the sacred has been lost, and its return would be the remedy of our
problems. What has disappeared from the sacred reveals that community has taken its place. The

haunting idea of an unattainable communion is replaced by the sharing of the community. This
unleashing of passions makes finitude pass from the one to the other; that is, the passage of sharing.
There can be no hypostasis (shared existence) of community, however, because this passage cannot be
completed. Incompletion is thus the principle of community. However, we cannot lose community as it
is given to us with being and as being. No matter how little communitarian it is, some aspect of
community remains. Community is either given to us, or we are given and abandoned to it. Community
is resistance, and particularly resistance to immanence. Therefore, community is transcendence, but a
form that no longer has any meaning; transcendence is simply a resistance to immanence.
For Bataille, love exposes the whole truth of community by opposing it to all plural, social, or
collective relation. Instead however, love does not capture or effect the essence of the entire
community. Lovers instead lead to communion as the sovereignty of lovers fails to produce a union and
produces only an instant of ecstasy. Furthermore, the communication between lovers does not speak
except to themselves. Community is the consumption of a social bond or fabric. Bataille contrasts the
sovereignty of lovers to the sovereignty of the city, yet ultimately finds the State impotent. Love
ultimately leads to death. The issue is that love does not complete community; it is a stepping stone.
Community exists through sharing and thus the individual passes through love and exposes himself to
it. Lovers are the extreme, yet not the limit, of community. The unleashing of passions confronts lovers
with community because it places them at a simple remove from community. Community appears in
literary communication, which is an inscription of the communitarian exposition. This is the inverse of
the lovers communication that Bataille offers insofar that it is inscribing the social and collective
duration of time. The lover's discourse instead seaks a duration for their joy that joy eludes. The writing
of community goes exposes to the outside instead of producing. Yet ecstasy comes are a price of being
nothing more than an erotic or fascist work of death. Lovers unwork the community. Unworking is
what is shown in their communal aspect and intimacy. It exposes this to the community which already
shares their intimacy [being-in-common includes them as part of the community.] Community is
sharing, and there exists no exposition of this limit.
The political is the disposition of the community. It must not be the assumption of the work of
love or death, but inscribe the sharing of the community. Political refers to a community ordering
itself to the unworking of its communication, or destined to this unworking; that is, the consciously
undergoing the experience of sharing [when being is shared, i.e being in common, there is no need for
communication because it is not moving from being to being]. The political never stops writing or
sharing itself, and exposes the limits but never passes beyond them or community. Instead, at every
instant singular beings share their limits, and share each other on their limits.
Nothing is more common to members of a community than a myth or group of myths. Myth and
community are defined by each other, and motivates a reflection on community according to myth.This
is the subject of Myth Interrupted. It draws on Blanchot's uninterrupted reflection, arguing that
reflection is the resistence and the insistence of community.

1. The idea of democracy as consensus, and our being-in-common, runs against Jacques
Ranciere's definition of democracy wherein democracy is defined as dissensus. For Ranciere,
we are truly democratic in the moment where we dissent against the status quo and articulate
counter spaces. This is a convincing argument. It questions the legitimacy of the consensus and
elucidates the notion of power present in a political ontology. How are state of affairs and
ontology the product of relations of power, and how does Nancy fall victim to this/escape it?
2. Much of contemporary theory rightly notes we live in a neoliberal era. What is the relationship
between The Inoperative Community and ideas of liberalism, rights, and self-interest? What
critique of contemporary society can we create from Nancy's text?

3. Why must Nancy's conception of community be rooted in the divine, when ultimately the divine
is lacking in his sense of community?
4. What does the negativity of deconstruction reveal, and what purpose does it serve? Can we turn
the effects of deconstruction into something possitive and prescriptive?
5. What is the difference between community and communion non-conceptually? How are they
apparent in relations amongst subjects?