Ego sum expositus: The Originary Exposure

Nancy's work is marked by dominant and recurrent themes, even though these are not always treated systematically. In the light of these themes, Nancy's project may be characterised as a recasting of existence as exposure. By making ‘being-in-common’ – singularity in a context of plurality – the ontological structure of existence, Nancy rethinks community, politics, the body, the world and art in the absence of a transcending essence or a given foundation, and in the presence of others. Existence is coexistence, and our ontological condition is that of a constitutive exposure to others. He develops this ontology notably in Being Singular Plural, but it is also at play in his earlier writings on community, finitude and freedom (The Inoperative Community and The Experience of Freedom). It is also from this ontological position that follows Nancy's emphasis on sense, which, as we have seen in Chapter 2, is produced through encounters between existing beings (The Sense of the World).

A central theme in Nancy's ontology then is the theme of the ‘common’. Being is always already in-common in so far as it depends on being exposed to others. Being-in-common is the originary exposure and irreducible condition of existence. Indeed, being is being-in-common for Nancy; it is marked by relation and encounters, though not by unity or fusion. The idea of relation and encounters behind this ‘ontology of the common’ signals a politics, but, as Nancy's response (2000b) in an interview suggests, the link is not straightforward: