Jean-Luc Nancy among the Philosophers

This volume focuses on the relational aspect of Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking. As Nancy himself showed, thinking might be a solitary activity but it is never singular in its dimension. Building on or breaking away from other thoughts, especially those by thinkers who had come before, thinking is always plural, relational. This “singular plural” dimension of thought in Nancy’s philosophical writings demands explication.

In this book, some of today’s leading scholars in the theoretical humanities shed light on how Nancy’s thought both shares with and departs from Descartes, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Weil, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, and Lyotard, elucidating “the sharing of voices,” in Nancy’s phrase, between Nancy and these thinkers.

Contributors: Georges Van Den Abbeele, Emily Apter, Rodolphe Gasché, Werner Hamacher, Eleanor Kaufman, Marie-Eve Morin, Timothy Murray, Jean-Luc Nancy, and John H. Smith

Introduction: Jean-Luc Nancy Passes | 1
Irving Goh

1 The Iterative Cogito, or the Sum of Each and Every Time
(Reading Descartes with Jean-Luc Nancy) | 21
Georges Van Den Abbeele

2 Nancy with Hegel: The Restless Pleasures of Calculus and the Infinite Opening in Finitude | 52
John H. Smith

3 The World, Absolutely: On Jean-Luc Nancy (and Karl Marx) | 75
Rodolphe Gasché

4 Worldless: Heidegger, Simone Weil, and Anti-Judaism via Nancy | 91
Eleanor Kaufman

5 Flesh and Écart in Merleau-Ponty and Nancy | 111
Marie-Eve Morin

6 Sexistence: Nancy and Lacan | 135
Emily Apter

7 Sublime Seizures in Lyotard and Nancy: The Political Blooming of Art and Technology | 149
Timothy Murray

8 D’avec: Mutations and Mutisms in Jean-Luc Nancy | 166
Werner Hamacher

9 Infinitely Passing (or, Pascal Passes) | 205
Jean-Luc Nancy

List of Contributors | 211

Index | 215