Jean-Luc Nancy by Marie-Eve Morin (review)

Marie-Eve Morin’s clear and concise introduction presents singular plurality as the central ontological insight around which the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy gravitates. Nancy conceives of existence as a series of singularities; these singularities have their identity only in relation to other singularities; the sense of existence articulates itself in the play between. Morin’s volume begins with an evocative account of how Nancy’s style — loose groups of essays that circle around a central idea and repetitive or circular sentence structures — elaborates this philosophy of ‘being-with’. A useful chronology then traces Nancy’s intellectual development, explaining his convergences and divergences with Lacan, Kant, Hegel, Bataille, Heidegger, and Derrida. The most important comparisons are drawn between Nancy and Derrida, and Nancy and Heidegger. Nancy thinks the irreducible exteriority at the heart of the self in the manner of Derrida but refuses to stress its radical alterity, emphasizing the possibility of a contact or proximity. Morin’s careful exposition of Nancy’s antifoundationalist ontology, with its clear definitions of terms such as ‘finitude’, ‘sharing’, and ‘sense’, prepares the way for a systematic exploration of how Nancy’s ontology shapes his thinking of Christianity, community, politics, corporeity, and art. Somewhat surprisingly, Morin foregrounds Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity, a topic on which the philosopher focuses relatively late in his career. She successfully demonstrates, however, how Nancy’s ontology of singular plurality anticipates an a-theological conception of the divine: a celebration of the nothingness by which the world opens out on to itself, of a transcendence in immanence. The chapter on community offers a particularly insightful analysis of how Bataille’s conception of negativity influences Nancy’s conception of the ecstatic moment of exposure and the un-workability of community. The chapter on politics, similarly, explores how Nancy attempts to think the political as a praxis that holds open and engages the space of our exposure or sharing. In the final chapter, useful connections are forged between Nancy’s writings on the body and art, as Morin explores how Nancy deconstructs traditional dichotomies of matter and spirit, idea and meaning, presenting the body as an opening to sense and art as a sensuous exteriority. Morin’s lucid overview of Nancy’s philosophy provides clear definitions of his key terms, teases out the complexity of his relationships to other thinkers, and demonstrates how his ontology of singular plurality informs his diverse range of concerns, from Christianity to politics, from embodiment to aesthetics.