The Disavowed Community Author:Jean-Luc Nancy 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 (2014). Stemming from Jean-Christophe Bailly's initial proposal to think community in terms of "number" or... more » the "numerous," and unfolding as a close reading of Blanchot's text, Nancy's essay addresses a range of themes and motifs that mark both his proximity to and distance from Blanchot's thinking. These themes and motifs include their respective readings of Georges Bataille, notably his political writings as well as his appeal to the "community of lovers"; pre- and post-war responses in France to fascism and communism; the relation between community, communitarianism, and being-in-common; the relation between the disenchantment with democracy and "aristocratic anarchism"; readings of Marguerite Duras's récit, The Malady of Death and Emmanuel Levinas; references to the Eucharist and Christianity; and a rethinking of politics and the political. In short, the exchange between Blanchot and Nancy opens up a rethinking of community played out as a question of avowal and disavowal.« less