This book remedies a gap in the on-going debate on community by a transparent and thorough analysis of the work of French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy.

A collection of five essays of French philosopher Nancy, originally published in 1985-86: The Inoperative Community, Myth Interpreted, Literary Communism, Shattered Love, and Of Divine Places. A paper edition (1924-7) is available for $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Jean-Luc Nancy and the Thinking of Otherness explores Nancy's opening of otherness at the heart of existence through the transformative appropriation of Heidegger and Levinas.

This book, by one of the most innovative and challenging contemporary thinkers, rethinks community and the very idea of the social. Nancy's fundamental argument is that being is always "being with," that "I" is not prior to "we," that existence is essentially co-existence.

Sex, more than just a part of our experience, troubles our conceptions of existence. Drawing on a fascinating array of sources, ancient and modern, philosophical and literary, Jean-Luc Nancy explores and upholds the form-giving thrust of the drive. Nancy reminds us that we are more comfortable with the drama of prohibitions, ideals, repression, transgression, and destruction, which often hamper thinking about sex and gender, than with the affirmation of an originary trouble at the limits of language that divides being and opens the world. Sexistence develops a new philosophical account of sexuality that resonates with contemporary research on gender and biopolitics. Without attempting to be comprehensive, the book ranges from the ancient world through psychoanalysis to discover the turbulence of the drive at the heart of existence.

Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community (1983)—a book that offered a critical response to an early essay by Jean-Luc Nancy on “the inoperative community”—Nancy responds in turn with The Disavowed Community. Stemming from Jean-Christophe Bailly’s initial proposal to think community in terms of “number” or the “numerous,” and unfolding as a close reading of Blanchot’s text, Nancy’s new book addresses a range of themes and motifs that mark both his proximity to and distance from Blanchot’s thinking, from Bataille’s “community of lovers” to the relation between community, communitarianism, and being-in-common; to Marguerite Duras, to the Eucharist. A key rethinking of politics and the political, this exchange opens up a new understanding of community played out as a question of avowal.

Before now, Jean-Luc Nancy's contributions to legal and political theory have been largely overlooked and lacking the in-depth appraisal they deserve. In this unique collection, eighteen notable Nancy scholars contextualize Nancy's work in these areas within the broad corpus of his other concerns. By emphasizing the originality of his theories in a globalizing age, each distinctive chapter provides a new and valuable insight into Nancy's legal and political philosophy. Together with his work on sense, community and art, these cutting edge contributions examine Nancy's conceptions of justice, legality and world in conjunction with the interpretation and rationality of: · The ontology of the event. · The form of relationality. · The effects of globalization. · The importance of Christianity in contemporary legal and political theory. Including a brand new essay by Nancy himself, this collection marks an important and timely step in a rich area of study.