ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author aims to consider The Peripatetic as john Thelwall's earliest literary experiment in political consciousness-raising and what we might think of, following the contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, as the writing of community. Voices and genres that give shape to what Nancy describes as 'a community of articulation' even as it casts into doubt its own ability, as a literary work, to catalyze immediate political change. The Inoperative Community is, in part, a critique of the very discourses that Thelwall drew on to express his ideas about community, particularly the notion of community as a family or confraternity of rational individuals. Despite the apparent conflict between Thelwall and Nancy over the idea of community as an organic body or extended family, there is a striking correspondence between their ways of thinking about communication. For Nancy, although community does not have organic totality, it may be said to have 'the totality of a dialogue'.
