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Explores the connection between Jean-Luc Nancy's political works on community and his works on art and literature, thus providing not only a comprehensive introduction into Nancy’s work but also a broader examination of the social and political role of literature.
What is the connection between the work of community and the work of literature? And in what way is literature implied in Jean-Luc Nancy's "inoperative" community? The Unraveled Plot investigates the relation between two domains that have only separately been addressed in the reception of Nancy's work: his political works on community on the one hand and his works on art and literature on the other. Lucidly traversing Nancy's entire oeuvre, Aukje van Rooden offers not only a comprehensive introduction into Nancy’s work but also a much broader reflection on the social and political role of literature. Situating Nancy's thought within a larger philosophical tradition leading from German Romanticism to contemporary social and political theory, she offers new insights, with and beyond Nancy, on the forming of communities and how literature can play a role.
"This is a book people will want to read. It fills a gap in the secondary literature on Nancy's work, which has tended to concentrate on his work as a political philosopher, first, and his work on art, second. Van Rooden takes seriously the work of thinking through the relations between politics, community, and literature—all three—in Nancy's work." — Anne O’Byrne, Stony Brook University, the State University of New York
Abbreviations of Works by Jean-Luc Nancy
Introduction: Literature, Community, and Politics
1. The Romantic Heritage
German Romanticism
The Romantic Notion of Work
The Romantic Work as a Model Without Model
Romantic Politics
The Reverse Side of Romanticism (Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe)
The Future Is Fragmentary
2. The Work of Community
Myth Interrupted (Nancy, Aristotle, Balzac)
Myth Without Mythology
Rethinking Communism
Rethinking Democracy (Nancy, Heidegger)
Sharing Community in and as Literature (Nancy, Blanchot)
The Fable Becoming the Real World (Nancy, Nietzsche, Lyotard)
3. An Ontological Poetics
Nancy's Poetics
Rethinking Art (Nancy, Hegel)
A Poetics of Everydayness (Nancy, Heidegger)
Singular Plural Poetics
Poetic Language
Language Beyond Language (Nancy, Derrida)
4. Literature's Unworked Force
The Scope and Limit of Nancy's Poetics
The Distinctive Force of Literature (Nancy, Rancière)
A Certain Way of Speaking
The Exigency of "Lying" (Nancy, Arendt, Derrida)
Literature as Unworked Performative
The Language of Fiction (Nancy, Blanchot)
Being Responsible for Literature
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index