ABSTRACT
A fter Cain killed his brother Abel and wasexpelled by God from the Garden of Eden, the first thing we are told he did was
know his wife. She conceived and bore a son
named Enoch, after which Cain built a city.
For a thinker of the origin and destiny of com-
munity who begins his exploration in the Book
of Genesis this is the crucial moment even if,
all alone, it does not tell a story. Anyone
approaching these questions in this text must
extend the moment and choose which details
to include as essential to the narrative of first
founding of a city. For Roberto Esposito, what
is essential is the fratricide that preceded the
founding and that left its mark on the begin-
nings of all subsequent communities. This is
the starting point of his work Communitas.
But what becomes of all the other elements of
the Genesis story: sex, begetting, bearing and
naming? They are left out, and this turns out
to be an early indication that sexual difference
will also be ignored. This is remarkable. Luce
Irigaray was writing as long ago as 1982 that
sexual difference was a philosophical issue
(perhaps the philosophical issue of the age),
but Augustine, whose work is Esposito’s point
