Existence as ontological responsibility, sense of the world, inoperative community, non-subjective freedom, anastasis,[1] dis-enclosure, being singular plural, being-with, sexistence
In addition to Le titre de la lettre, Nancy collaborated with Lacoue-Labarthe on several other books and articles. Nancy is credited with helping to reopen the question of the ground of community and politics with his 1985 work La communauté désoeuvrée (The Inoperative Community), following Blanchot's The Unavowable Community (1983) and Agamben responded to both with The Coming Community (1990). One of the very few monographs that Jacques Derrida ever wrote on a contemporary philosopher is On Touching, Jean-Luc Nancy.[3]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nancy suffered serious medical problems. He underwent a heart transplant and his recovery was made more difficult by a long-term cancer diagnosis. He stopped teaching and participating in almost all of the committees with which he was engaged, but continued to write. Many of his best known texts were published during this time. An account of his experience, L'intrus (The Intruder), was published in 2000. Nancy was a professor at the University of Strasbourg. Nancy was also Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Chair and Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School.[4]
In 1980, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe organized a conference at Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle on Derrida and politics entitled "Les Fins de l'homme" ("The Ends of Man"). The conference solidified Derrida's place at the forefront of contemporary philosophy, and was a place to begin an in-depth conversation between philosophy and contemporary politics. Further to their desire to rethink the political, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe set up in the same year the Centre de Recherches Philosophiques sur la Politique (Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political). The centre was dedicated to pursuing philosophical rather than empirical approaches to political questions, and supported such speakers as Claude Lefort and Jean-François Lyotard. By 1984, however, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe were dissatisfied with the direction work at the centre was taking, and it was closed down.[6]
During that period Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy produced several important papers, together and separately. Some of these texts appear in Les Fins de l'homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980 (1981), Rejouer le politique (1981), La retrait du politique (1983), and Le mythe nazi (1991, revised edition; originally published as Les méchanismes du fascisme, 1981). Many of these texts are gathered in translation in Retreating the Political (1997).
La Communauté désœuvrée
Nancy's first book on the question of community, La Communauté désœuvrée (The Inoperative Community, 1986), is perhaps his best-known work.[7] This text is an introduction to some of the main philosophical themes Nancy continued to work with. Nancy traces the influence of the notion of community to concepts of experience, discourse, and the individual, and argues that it has dominated modern thought. Discarding popular notions, Nancy redefines community, asking what can it be if it is reduced neither to a collection of separate individuals, nor to a hypostasized communal substance, e.g., fascism. He writes that our attempt to design society according to pre-planned definitions frequently leads to social violence and political terror, posing the social and political question of how to proceed with the development of society with this knowledge in mind. La Communauté désœuvrée means that community is not the result of a production, be it social, economic or even political (nationalist) production; it is not une œuvre, a "work of art" ("œuvre d'art", but "art" is here understood in the sense of "artifice").
"The community that becomes a single thing (body, mind, fatherland, Leader...) ...necessarily loses the in of being-in-common. Or, it loses the with or the together that defines it. It yields its being-together to a being of togetherness. The truth of community, on the contrary, resides in the retreat of such a being." (Preface, xxxix).
L'Expérience de la liberté
Nancy's dissertation for his Doctorat d'État looked at the works of Kant, Schelling, Sartre and Heidegger, and concentrated on their treatment of the topic of freedom. It was published in 1988 as L'Expérience de la Liberté (The Experience of Freedom). Since then, Nancy has continued to concentrate on developing a reorientation of Heidegger's work. Nancy treats freedom as a property of the individual or collectivity, and looks for a "non-subjective" freedom which would attempt to think the existential or finite origin for every freedom. Nancy argues that it is necessary to think freedom in its finite being, because to think of it as the property of an infinite subject is to make any finite being a limit of freedom. The existence of the other is the necessary condition of freedom, rather than its limitation.
Le sens du monde
Nancy addresses the world in its contemporary global configuration in other writings on freedom, justice and sovereignty. In his 1993 book Le sens du monde (The Sense of the World), he asks what we mean by saying that we live in one world, and how our sense of the world is changed by saying that it is situated within the world, rather than above or apart from it. To Nancy, the world, or existence, is our ontological responsibility, which precedes political, judicial and moral responsibility. He describes our being in the world as an exposure to a naked existence, without the possibility of support by a fundamental metaphysical order or cause. Contemporary existence no longer has recourse to a divine framework, as was the case in feudal society where the meaning and course of life was predetermined. The contingency of our naked existence as an ontological question is the main challenge of our existence in contemporary global society.
All of these themes relating to world are taken up again by Nancy in his 2002 book La création du monde ou la mondialisation (The Creation of the World or Globalization), where he makes the distinction between globalization as a deterministic process and mondialisation as an open-ended "world-forming" process. Here, he connects his critique with Marx's critique of political economy, which saw "free labour" as what produces the world. Nancy argues that an authentic "dwelling" in the world must be concerned with the creation of meaning (enjoyment) and not final purposes, closed essences, and exclusive worldviews. The present system of expanding cities and nodes in the planetary techno-scientific network (tied to capitalism) leads to the loss of world, because the world is treated as an object (globe), even though the self-deconstruction of ontotheology increasingly made it the "subject" of its own creation.
Être singulier pluriel
In his book Être singulier pluriel (Being Singular Plural, 2000), Nancy tackles the question of how we can speak of a plurality of a "we" without making the "we" a singular identity. The premise of the title essay in this book is that there is no being without "being-with," that "I" does not come before "we" (i.e., Dasein does not precede Mitsein) and that there is no existence without co-existence. In an extension from his thoughts on freedom, community, and the sense of the world, he imagines the "being-with" as a mutual exposure to one another that preserves the freedom of the "I", and thus a community that is not subject to an exterior or pre-existent definition.
"There is no meaning if meaning is not shared, and not because there would be an ultimate or first signification that all beings have in common, but because meaning is itself the sharing of Being."
The five essays that follow the title piece continue to develop Nancy's philosophy through discussions of sovereignty, war and technology, ecotechnics, identity, the Gulf War and Sarajevo. Nancy's central concern in these essays remains the "being-with", which he uses to discuss issues of psychoanalysis, politics and multiculturalism, looking at notions of "self" and "other" in current contexts.
Artistic analysis
Nancy has also written for art catalogues and international art journals, especially on contemporary art. He also writes poetry and for the theatre and has earned respect as an influential philosopher of art and culture. In his book Les Muses published in 1994 (The Muses, 1996), he begins with an analysis of Hegel's thesis on the death of art. Among the essays in The Muses is a piece on Caravaggio, originally a lecture given at the Louvre. In this essay, Nancy looks for a different conception of painting where painting is not a representation of the empirical world, but a presentation of the world, of sense, or of existence. Nancy has published books on film and music, as well as texts on the problem of representation, on the statute of literature, on image and violence, and on the work of On Kawara, Charles Baudelaire, and Friedrich Hölderlin.
Film theory
Nancy's text L'intrus formed the basis for French director Claire Denis's film of the same name.
He has written extensively on film, including The Evidence of Film, a short work on Abbas Kiarostami.
Nancy has developed three films in conjunction with artist-filmmaker Phillip Warnell. He appears in their 2009 film Outlandish: 'Strange Foreign Bodies', which also features a text he wrote specifically for the project, Étranges Corps Étrangers. Nancy contributed a poem, 'Oh The Animals of Language' to Warnell's 2014 feature-length film 'Ming of Harlem: Twenty One Storeys in the Air'. Warnell and Nancy worked on a new text-film collaboration which was completed in 2017, 'The Flying Proletarian'.
Bibliography
Titles in French
La Remarque spéculative (Un bon mot de Hegel). Paris: Galilée, 1973.
La titre de la lettre. Paris: Galilée, 1973 (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe).
Le Discours de la syncope. I. Logodaedalus. Paris: Flammarion, 1975.
L'absolu littéraire. Théorie de la littérature du romantisme allemand. Paris: Seuil, 1978 (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe).
Ego sum. Paris: Flammarion, 1979.
Les Fins de l'homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980. 1981 (ed., with Lacoue-Labarthe).
Rejouer le politique. 1981 (ed., with Lacoue-Labarthe).
Le partage des voix. Paris: Galilée, 1982.
La retrait du politique. 1983 (ed., with Lacoue-Labarthe).
La communauté désoeuvrée. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1983.
L'Impératif catégorique. Paris: Flammarion, 1983.
L'oubli de la philosophie. Paris: Galilée, 1986.
Des lieux divins. Mauvezin: T.E.R, 1987.
L'expérience de la liberté. Paris: Galilée, 1988.
Une Pensée finie. Paris: Galilée, 1990.
Le poids d'une pensée. Québec: Le griffon d'argile, 1991.
Le mythe nazi. La tour d'Aigues: L'Aube, 1991 (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, revised edition; originally published as Les méchanismes du fascisme, 1981).
La comparution (politique à venir). Paris: Bourgois, 1991 (with Jean-Chrisophe Bailly).
Corpus. Paris: Métailié, 1992.
Le sens du monde. Paris: Galilée, 1993.
Les Muses. Paris: Galilée, 1994.
Être singulier pluriel. Paris: Galilée, 1996.
Hegel. L'inquiétude du négatif. Paris: Hachette, 1997.
L'Intrus. Paris: Galilée, 2000.
Le regard du portrait. Paris: Galilée, 2000.
Conloquium, in Roberto Esposito, Communitas. trad. de Nadine Le Lirzin, Paris: PUF, 2000.
La pensée dérobée. Paris: Galilée, 2001.
The evidence of film. Bruxelles: Yves Gevaert, 2001.
La création du monde ou la mondialisation. Paris: Galilée, 2002.
À l’écoute. Paris: Galilée, 2002.
Nus sommes. La peau des images. Paris: Klincksieck, 2003 (with Federico Ferrari).
Noli me tangere. Paris: Bayard, 2003.
"L'extension de l'âme". Metz: Le Portique, 2003.
"Lil y a' du rapport sexuel". Paris: Galilée, 2003.
La déclosion (Déconstruction du Christianisme 1). Paris: Galilée, 2005.
Sur le commerce des pensées: Du livre et de la librairie. Paris: Galilée, 2005.
Iconographie de l'auteur. Paris: Galilée, 2005 (with Federico Ferrari).
Tombe de sommeil. Paris: Galilée, 2007.
Juste impossible. Paris: Bayard, 2007.
À plus d'un titre: Jacques Derrida. Paris: Galilée, 2007.
Vérité de la democratie. Paris: Galilée, 2008.
Le poids d'une pensée, l'approche. Strasbourg: La Phocide, 2008.
Je t'aime, un peu, beaucoup, passionnément.... Paris: Bayard Centurion, 2008.
À Vengeance ? de Robert Antelme, in Robert Antelme, Vengeance ?. Hermann, 2010.
La Ville au loin. Strasbourg: La Phocide, 2011.
Maurice Blanchot, passion politique. Paris: Galilée, 2011.
Politique et au-delà. Interview with Philipp Armstrong and Jason E. Smith, Paris: Galilée, 2011.
Dans quels mondes vivons-nous?, with Aurélien Barrau, Paris: Galilée, 2011.
L’Équivalence des catastrophes (Après Fukushima), Paris: Galilée, 2012.
La Possibilité d'un monde, Paris: Les petits platons, 2013.
Jamais le mot "créateur"..., with Simon Hantaï, Paris, Galilée, 2013.
L’Autre Portrait, Paris, Galilée, 2013.
Être singulier pluriel, nouvelle édition augmentée, Paris, Galilée, 2013.
Le Philosophe boiteux, Le Havre, Franciscopolis/Presses du réel, 2014.
La Jouissance. Questions de caractère, with Adèle Van Reeth, Paris, Plon, 2014.
La Communauté désavouée, Paris, Galilée, 2014.
Inventions à deux voix. Entretiens, with Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Paris, Éditions du Félin, 2015.
Proprement dit : Entretien sur le mythe, with Mathilde Girard, Paris, Lignes, 2015.
Journal des Phéniciennes, Paris, Christian Bourgois, 2015.
Banalité de Heidegger, Paris, Galilée, 2015.
Demande : Littérature et philosophie, Paris, Galilée, 2015.
Entretien sur le christianisme (Paris, 2008), with Bernard Stiegler and Alain Jugnon, in: Bernard Stiegler, Dans la disruption : Comment ne pas devenir fou ?, Paris, Les Liens qui Libèrent, 2016.
Que faire ?, Paris, Galilée, 2016.
Signaux sensibles, entretien à propos des arts, with Jérôme Lèbre, Paris, Bayard, 2017.
La Tradition allemande dans la philosophie, with Alain Badiou, Paris, Éditions Lignes, 2017.
Sexistence, Paris, Galilée, 2017.
Exclu le Juif en nous, Paris, Galilée, 2018.
Hegel, l'inquiétude du négatif, Paris, Galilée, 2018.
Derrida, suppléments, Paris, Galilée, 2019.
La peau fragile du monde, Paris, Galilée, 2020.
Mascarons de Macron, Paris, Galilée, 2021.
Cruor, Paris, Galilée, 2021.
English translations
The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism. With Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988.
^For more details on the reasons for the closure, see Lacoue-Labarthe & Nancy, "Chers Amis: A Letter on the Closure of the Political," in Lacoue-Labarthe & Nancy, Retreating the Political (London & New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 143–47.
Hörl, Erich. 'The Artificial Intelligence of Sense. The History of Sense and Technology After Jean-Luc Nancy (by way of Simondon).' In: Parrhesia, no. 17, 2013, pp. 11–24.
Hutchens, B. C. Jean-Luc Nancy and the Future of Philosophy. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.
Hutchens, B. C., ed. Jean-Luc Nancy: Justice, Legality, and World. New York: Continuum, 2012.
James, Ian. The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Kamuf, Peggy, ed. On the Work of Jean-Luc Nancy: A Special Issue of Paragraph. Nov. 1992.
Martin, Jean-Clet, ed. Sens en tous sens, (with Jean-Luc Nancy, Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida...), Paris, Galilée, 2004.