ABSTRACT
R oberto Esposito’s deconstruction of the“semantics of the proprium” (Communitas 2) directly addresses these competing perspec-
tives on community. Besides loose etymological
analyses by anarchists like Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon and Max Stirner, both criticized by
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (German
Ideology 245-48), this debate never carried
beyond the core distinction between private
(or individual) vs. public (or common) prop-
erty. The modern rendition of the semantics
of the proper began when the “West” set out
to colonize the “rest” of the world. From
Pope Alexander VI’s Papal Bull of 1493, to
the enclosure movement in England, to the
social contract tradition epitomized by John
Locke’s theory of property (Second Treatise),
to contemporary rights discourse, to trade-
related aspects of intellectual property rights,
the West has been engaged in a slow process
of converting everything in its wake into
private property.1
