THL 76 Literary Theory/Philosophy n this powerful work, Jean-Luc Nancy exam1'nes 1•11n · 'd · 1 mumty as an 1 t>ll that has dominated modern thought and traces t'ts ru) t' t · ~ , a ton o concept~ of experiem~e, disl·ourse, and the individual. Contrary to popular Western notions of l'ommunity, Nancy shows that it is neither a projel·t of fusion nor production. Rather, he argues, community I' an he definf'cl through the political naturt' of its resistance against immanent power. "'The Inoperative Community contains philosophical developments of the most original kind on the theme of community, the role of myth in the establishment of community, and the role of remythization today. In addition it continues a discussion with Blanchot and Bataille, thinkers of the first order." -Alphonso Lingis, Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University "This is a major contribution to the most important current debate in literary tht>ory. It takes an original position and provides strong arguments. This is a book to be reckoned with." -Wlad Godzich, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Montreal Jean-Luc Nancy teaches at the University of Human Sciences in Strasbourg, France. He is the author, with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, of The Literary Absolute (1988). Peter Connor recently received a doctorate in French from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently assistant professor of French at Barnard College. Among the philosophical esr;ays he has translated are several by Georges Bataille. ISBN 0-8166-1924-7 (B 9 0 0 0 O> ~430 [.263 Cuvt•r tlesign t.y Dawn Mathers Univenity of Minnesota Press I c~ 9 7 ... Printed in ll .S.A. = Theory and Hislory of Lileralure Edited by Wlad Godzkh and Jochen Schulle-Sasse Volume 76. Jean-Luc Nancy The Inoperative Community Volume 75. Rey Chow Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading between West and East Volume 74. Paul J. Thibault Social Semiotics as Praxis Volume 73. Helene Cixous Reading with Clarice Lispector Volume 72. N.S. Trubetzkoy Writings on Literature Volume 71. Neil Larsen Modernism and Hegemony Volume 70 .• Paul Zumthor Oral Poetry: An Introduction Volume 68. Hans Robert Jauss Question and Answer: Forms of Dialogic Understanding Volume 66. Paul de Man Critical Writings, 1953-1978 Volume 64. Didier Coste Narrative as Communication Volume 63. Renato Barilli Rhetoric Volume 62. Daniel Cottom Text and Culture Volume 61. Theodor W. Adorno Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic Volume 60. Kristin Ross The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune Volume 59. Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich Reading de Man Reading Volume 58. F.W.J. Schelling The Philosophy of Art Volume 57. Louis Marin Portrait of the King Volume 56. Peter Sloterdijk Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche's Materialism Volume 55. Paul Smith Discerning the Subject Volume 54. Reda Bensmaia The Barthes Effect Volume 53. Edmond Cros Theory and Practice of Sociocriticism Volume 52. Philippe Lejeune On Autobiography Volume 51. Thierry de Duve Pictorial Nominalism: On Marcel Duchamp 's Passage from Painting to the Readymade Volume 50. Luiz Costa Lima Control of the Imaginary Volume 49. Frederic Jameson The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 197 I­ /986, Volume 2 Volume 48. Frederic Jameson The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 197/- 1986, Volume I Volume 47. Eugene Vance From Topic to Tale: Logic and Narrativity in the Middle Ages Volume 46. Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard The Differend For other books in the series, seep. 177. The Inoperative Community Jean-Luc Nancy Edited by Peter Connor Translated by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney Foreword by Christopher Fynsk Theory and History of Literature, Volume 76 University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and Oxford Copyriglll © 1991 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Chapters I, 2, and 3 originally appeared in La communoutj dtsoeuvree, copyright © 1986 by Christian Bourgois Edileur, Paris; chapter 4 as "L'amour en eclats," in Alia, copyright (Cl 1986 by Al~a. Paris; chapter S as "Des lieux divins," in Qu'est-cr que Dwu? PhilosophwiThiologre. Hommoge a l'abbi Donrel Coppwters ~Gibson (1919-/98JJ, copyright tc) 1985 by Publicalions des Facullb Universilllires Saint-Louis, Brussels; the present English translation of "Des lieux divins" first appeared in Paragraph: A Journal of the Modern Critical Theory Gro11p, vol. 7 (March 1986). All rights resen-ed. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmiued, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, phorocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior wrlnen permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 5S414 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Ubrlry of CoalftSI Cat•Joai•K-in-Publatloa Dal• Nancy, Jean-Luc. [Communaut~ dna:uvr~. English! The inoperative community I Jean-Luc Nancy. p. em. - (Theory and history of literature ; v. 76) Translation of : La communaut~ dba:uvree. Includes index. ISBN 0-8166-1923-9.- ISBN 0-8166-1924-7 (pbk.) I. Community. 2. Political participation. I. Title. II. Series. HMI31.N3313 1990 307-dc20 90-40601 CIP A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. ... I "'• - .._, '"'- ~J C) fi 1 :; : ~ o r Contents Foreword: Experiences of Finitude Christopher Fynsk vii ? . f 1f Preface xxxvi I. The Inoperative Community -"2. Myth Interrupted 43 3. "Literary Communism" 71 4. Shattered Love 82 5. Of Divine Places 110 Notes 151 Index 171 Foreword Experiences of Finitude Christopher Fynsk A full introduction to Jean-luc Nancy's philosophical work would require treatment of the practice of reading that he has pursued in carrying forward the task of deconstructing the history of metaphysics. Nancy has devoted extensive study to the major texts of modern philosophy, from Descartes through Nietzsche, because he follows Heidegger in assuming that any effort to think the present (the advent of a time that can no longer be thought with any teleological or fundamental schema) presupposes a lucid under­ standing of philosophy's closure. Heidegger argued that tracing the limit formed by the end of metaphysics entails repeating the movements by which philosophy exhausted its possibilities-this, in order to release what phi­ losophy has closed upon in its effort to secure an ideal order of meaning. Nancy (with others: the community to which Jacques Derrida refers in the opening pages of "Violence and Metaphysics")• has recognized that this task of repetition is far from complete, that in principle it cannot be completed, and that it requires repetition in its turn. Heidegger made it clear that we cannot simply have done with philosophy: our language -emains the language of metaphysics. He also showed some of the possi­ bilities that lie in thinking the closure of metaphysics (as Nancy reminds us, a border marks an inside and an outside). But he restricted and even foreclosed those possibilities in his turn, as we see most dramatically in his political statements. By repeating Heidegger's task of deconstructing meta­ physics in close readings of some of the major texts of the tradition, Nancy also deconstructs Heidegger and works toward a new thought of difference. \'ii \'iii I'ORl'WORD Much of Nancy's work has thus taken the form of commentary, and continues to do so (as in the case of his essay on the Hegelian monarch).~ But over the past ten years, Nancy has also sought to depart from this mode and to pursue in a more independent fashion the notion of difference to which his work has pointed. He has attempted to abandon the com­ mentator's position of relative safety and to elaborate a thought that would answer to the fact that many of the concerns to which fundamental phi­ losophy was addressed continue to speak to us today in the form of imper­ atives (freedom, justice, community), even though the conceptual systems from which these ideas have drawn their meaning are no longer viable. Nancy has pursued aggressively the notion that the end of philosophy is not the end of thought. Indeed, in his view the end of philosophy demands thought, and he is willing to retain the name of philosophy to designate the effort to answer to these obscure imperatives. Nancy has thus returned to a set of themes that still form the mainstays of political and ethical thought but that arc rarely taken up today as questions (and arc thus largely abandoned to traditional philosophical com­ mentary: the endless ~i<m.. of philosophy's past positions or points of view). He has done so from the basis of a thought of history, a conception of the event of philosophy's end (the collapse of all foundational discourses and the advent of modernity or postmodernity) and of the "eventual" character of history itself. Proceeding from a notion of the finitude of Being-its essential difference from itself, or its historicity-Nancy has sought to rethink our experience of history, or what I might call the passions of historically defined existence: among them, freedom, love, community, and religion (the last three form the points of focus in this volume). He has begun to elaborate in this manner a most severe, though also liberating, thought of finitude. My aim here will be to sketch the basic lines of this thought and some of the questions it raises, with particular reference to the essays contained in this volume. I will neglect in this manner many of Nancy's contributions to philosophical research (work that is frequently at the margins of phi­ losophy, at its intersections with literary theory, psychoanalysis, and polit­ ical discourse), trusting that the increasing availability of this material in English lessens the need for an introductory overview.' But before approach­ ing what Nancy describes as the "singularity" of Being-its singularity implying its multiplicity, and thus a differential structure that forms what Nancy calls the "political space," and the site of community-1 would like to pursue a little further the singular character of Nancy's own work.