My aim in this paper is to expose a misrepresentation of Jean-Luc Nancy’s ideas on community in the secondary literature. I argue that discussions of Nancy’s work have failed to recognize a transformation that has occurred in his later thought, which distances him from Jacques Derrida. I propose that Nancy’s later work points the way beyond the “persistence of unhappy consciousness” in deconstruction through allowing for the possibility of the creation of a world alternative to globalization. Recognition of this transformation (...) is suggestive for how Nancy’s theoretical framework might be employed in analyses of recent resistance movements. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy has not written a single work dedicated entirely to the problem of justice or related themes, but nevertheless, topics such as right, justice, judgement or law appear in various places in Nancy’s work. Besides ‘Lapsus judicii’ and ‘Dies irae’, the theme of justice particularly comes up and in two small texts: ‘Cosmos Basileus’ and ‘Human Excess’. These texts are crucial to understand Nancy’s point of view in juridical matters but are largely left aside in secondary literature, probably because (...) of their enigmatic character. In this article we explore the cluster of juridical questions in ‘Cosmos Basileus’ and ‘Human Excess’ and argue why today, for Nancy, an ontological perspective is needed to cope with juridical questions. For him, justice is in the first place bound up with the fact of our co-existence, with what is unique about every existence in its co-existence with other creations. He claims, first, that freedom is responsibility and the act of doing justice to existence and, second, that sharing the world is the law of the world. We will discuss these two claims and conclude with Nancy’s plead for ontological reflection within juridical topics. (shrink)