Being Singular Plural
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Être singulier pluriel (Being Singular Plural, 2000) is a book by Jean-Luc Nancy.
In it, Nancy tackles the question of how we can speak of a plurality of a "we" without making the "we" a singular identity. The premise of the title essay in this book is that there is no being without "being-with," that "I" does not come before "we" (i.e., Dasein does not precede Mitsein) and that there is no existence without co-existence. In an extension from his thoughts on freedom, community, and the sense of the world, he imagines the "being-with" as a mutual exposure to one another that preserves the freedom of the "I", and thus a community that is not subject to an exterior or pre-existent definition.
- "There is no meaning if meaning is not shared, and not because there would be an ultimate or first signification that all beings have in common, but because meaning is itself the sharing of Being."
The five essays that follow the title piece continue to develop Nancy's philosophy through discussions of sovereignty, war and technology, ecotechnics, identity, the Gulf War and Sarajevo. Nancy's central concern in these essays remains the "being-with", which he uses to discuss issues of psychoanalysis, politics and multiculturalism, looking at notions of "self" and "other" in current contexts.
