From Interests to Inter-esse: Jean-Luc Nancy on Deglobalization and Sovereignty

Jean-Luc Nancy’s video presentation at the Conference La nouvelle sphère intermediatique IV.Mémoire et médiations. Entre l’Europe et les Amériques puts his philosophical topic of the “impossible community” at the heart of political debates on the disrupting effects of globalization. Turbulent developments within contemporary geopolitics like the immigration and transmigration of politico-economic refugees, crypto-theological claims about the authenticity of nations, the increasing influence of global capital flows on the daily lives of citizens, technoscientific mediations of interactions, the diversification of fundamentalisms (from religious to market fundamentalism), and multicultural politics—all of these hot issues are touched upon philosophically by Nancy’s thesis of “l’être-à-soi du peuple, son unité comme communauté ou comme corps social (…) comme inatteignable autant que nécessaire” (La démocratie à venir).¹