Community and its critique

Led by Samuel Dowd and Laura Cull - this is a two part reading group focussing on contemporary writing around notions of community – its formation and dissolution - as a myth founded in language and possible sites of communion.

We will open the discussion with an exploration of short excerpts taken from two texts –The Inoperative Community by Jean-Luc Nancy and On Deconstructing Nostalgia for Community within the West: The Debate between Nancy and Blanchot. In this discussion we will ask where the notion of community arises from, how this has affected our perception of history and of what relevance, if any, it holds for the individual in contemporary society.

In the second session the focus will shift to the limits and potential use of refiguring community as artists, writers, etc. moving beyond received notions of the term to open up new forms of shared language. This session will discuss Georgio Agamben’s The Coming Community and also The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common by Alphonso Lingis. We will also discuss the works of various arts practitioners in light of these texts.

Texts

Agamben, G. (2005) The Coming Community, Michael Hardt (trans.) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

Bernasconi, R. (1993) “On Deconstructing Nostalgia for Community within the West: The Debate between Nancy and Blanchot”, Research in Phenomenology, Volume 23, Number 1, 1993 , pp. 3-21(19)

Lingis, A. (1994) The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press).

Nancy, J-L. (2004) The Inoperative Community, Peter Connor (ed., trans.) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

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