From Interests to Inter-esse

Jean-Luc Nancy's video presentation at the Conference La nouvelle sphère intermediatique IV.Mémoire et médiations. Entre l'Europe et les Amériques puts his philosophical topic of the "impossible community" at the heart of political debates on the disrupting effects of globalization. Turbulent developments within contemporary geopolitics like the immigration and transmigration of politico-economic refugees, crypto-theological claims about the authenticity of nations, the increasing influence of global capital flows on the daily lives of citizens, technoscientific mediations of interactions, the diversification of fundamentalisms (from religious to market fundamentalism), and multicultural politics—all of these hot issues are touched upon philosophically by Nancy's thesis of "l'être-à-soi du peuple, son unité comme communauté ou comme corps social (...) comme inatteignable autant que nécessaire" (La démocratie à venir).1 "Our" informational world as an intermediatic sphere is rapidly becoming an integrated web of networks in which economic transactions, political interactions, scientific inventions and cultural interventions are mediated by technologies that have become discourses with their own finalities. Nancy tries to make sense of a "new intermediatic sphere," criticizing this "medi@crity" as a global feedback system, pejoratively labeled "globalization." Reflecting upon the interrelations between economy, politics, science and culture, he implicitly raises the related question of how to make sense of a disintegration and fragmentation rooted in the modernist project: how to reorient the sovereignty of its political community par excellence—i.e. the nation-state and its people. The deconstruction of state sovereignty through a profound reflection upon the possibility of a community dates back to the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. It evokes the names of Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt and Georges Bataille. Contemporary deconstructive thinkers like the late Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy frequently refer to this tradition in their analyses of globalization. However, the ambiguity of this political endeavor became evident during [End Page 81] the last four decades of the twentieth century. Nancy's oeuvre—from La remarque spéculative (Un bon mot de Hegel) (1973) to La Communauté affrontée (2002)—covers this period, in which advanced information technology (IT) enhanced both the geopolitical phenomenon of globalization and the ongoing dismantling of the nation-state, to which he refers in the last pages of La création du monde ou la mondialisation (2002).2 Writing about Nancy's forceful philosophy is difficult because it is largely dependent upon his écriture. His writing is tuned by «un mode d'oxymore ou de paradoxe» (La démocratie à venir). Typical too is the mix of Heideggerian and Hegelian overtones (La création du monde ou la mondialisation [CMM], 158-159)3 . While exploring his thinking, I will modestly mime his writing instead of explaining it from a meta-level, frequently referring to Nancy's philosophical inspirations—Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Bataille, Derrida, Lyotard and Deleuze/Guattari—for conceptual contextualization. For a better understanding of Nancy's highly elaborate but sometimes rather dense presentation on the sovereignty of the people in relation to the "new intermediatic sphere," I will mainly interrogate his latest books. It is here that he explicitly focuses upon globalization and sovereignty (CMM, 145-169). My exploration of the shift from being-in-common (être-en-commun) via being-with (être-avec) to the between (entre), configures Nancy's critique of globalization and his plea for mondialization—i.e. "créer un monde." His deconstruction of the philosophical debate on the creatio ex nihilo is crucial. This will enable me to compare Nancy's ontological approach with the outcomes of my research on intermediality, especially two key notions: radical "medi() crity" and inter-esse.4 By contextualizing Nancy's ideas, I hope to show that his deconstruction of sovereignty adds a substantial and critical perspective to the debate on "the new intermediatic sphere."5 1) Exposition and Disposition: Mind the Gap! How

Globalization · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · French Literature and Critical Theory · Law · Philosophical and Historical Studies · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

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