Community in Question. Failure of Communitarianism, Misery of Individualisms and Community of Existence
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Polish Academy of Sciences
Publication date: 2016-06-28
Polish Sociological Review 2016;194(2):227-248
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ABSTRACT
The main task of the present paper is to rethink the very idea of community, in comparison with other
terms that describe the human collectivity such as—people, society, population, free association, group, collective
or aggregate. After analyzing three basic ways of thinking about community—the liberal one, communitarianist
and the biopolitical paradigm, the author reconstructs the contemporary concepts of community, such as the
“unavowable community” (Maurice Blanchot), “the inoperative community” (Jean-Luc Nancy), “community in
question” (Jacques Derrida), “the coming community” (Giorgio Agamben), “a collective” (Bruno Latour), and
communitas (Roberto Esposito). As the result of his analyzes the author infers the general conclusion, that what is
at stake in philosophical discourse about communities is “conjuring up” or “designing” alternative ways of being,
alternative ontologies of the social world.