In The Inoperative Community, Nancy argues that the problem of being has been thought predominantly in isolation from the question of community. For Nancy, the demand of community is the blindspot of Western metaphysics. Nancy criticises Heidegger’s Being and Time for positing Dasein before Mitsein, as it appears to assert atomised existence before the ‘with’ of community. Contra Heidegger, Nancy argues that being cannot pre-exist in itself: the Mit- does not come to qualify the sein, rather the Mit- or ‘with’ of being is that which constitutes being itself. For Nancy, being must be thought first and foremost in terms of what he calls ‘being-with’ (‘l’être-avec’) or ‘being-incommon’ (‘l’être-en-commun’). Nancy thus reverses the order of the Heideggerian existential structure, proposing the originary ‘with’ of community as the background against which being demands to be thought, the ‘with’ continually interrupting any ontological claim to self-presence or atomised identity.

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