community, work has frequently returned to the immanent figure proper to a Nancy’s a figure for which; ‘golden age’, always it is a matter of a lost age in which community was woven of tight, harmonious, and infrangible bonds and in which above all it played back to itself, through its institutions, its rituals, and its symbols, the representation, indeed the living offering, of its own immanent unity, intimacy, and autonomy. (Nancy, 1991:9) Enclosed, stable and unchanging, the immanent figure of community, as it is deployed in the literature, turns the originary relationality of the community, of ‘communitarian’ which more below, to an a non-relational, unified community Yet the essence; figure. fact that this community can only ever be in the communitarian literature as ‘lost’, elsewhere, is instructive. For (Nancy, 1991:11); or has not taken place” “[c]ommunity rather, it has only taken place this constitutive loss, a retreat of immanent figures. as as What the writing of Etzioni and others demonstrate is that the immanent figure, as it immediately withdraws, betrays a at the heart of any thinking of the transcendence figure. Nancy is critical not of the figure as such, but rather a to absolute “will doubling as Sparks notes as a immanence” (1991:12), “will-to-figure” (1997:xxiii), which reacts to the withdrawal of figures by seeking to strengthen and solidify them or to find in their absence a further reason to clarify and reiterate their importance. Alasdair MacIntyre (1997) is indicative of this position, his work re-stating a for need figures, it being only through a relation to a certain model of justice, practised and
community, Nancy’s work has frequently returned to the immanent figure proper to a ‘golden age’, a figure for which; always it is a matter of a lost age in which community was woven of tight, harmonious, and infrangible bonds and in which above all it played back to itself, through its institutions, its rituals, and its symbols, the representation, indeed the living offering, of its own immanent unity, intimacy, and autonomy. (Nancy, 1991:9) Enclosed, stable and unchanging, the immanent figure of community, as it is deployed in the ‘communitarian’ literature, turns the originary relationality of the community, of which more below, to an essence; a non-relational, unified community figure. Yet the fact that this community can only ever be ‘lost’, in the communitarian literature as elsewhere, is instructive. For “[c]ommunity has not taken place” (Nancy, 1991:11); or rather, it has only taken place as this constitutive loss, as a retreat of immanent figures. What the writing of Etzioni and others demonstrate is that the immanent figure, as it immediately withdraws, betrays a transcendence at the heart of any thinking of the figure. Nancy is critical not of the figure as such, but rather a “will to absolute immanence” (1991:12), doubling as Sparks notes as a “will-to-figure” (1997:xxiii), which reacts to the withdrawal of figures by seeking to strengthen and solidify them or to find in their absence a further reason to clarify and reiterate their importance. Alasdair MacIntyre (1997) is indicative of this position, his work re-stating a need for figures, it being only through a relation to a certain model of justice, practised and
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