ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Hafid Bouazza's writing can be seen as a literary version of Nancy's singular plural, thus envisioning a new link between the individual and the collective. Bouazza's writing is dominated by two main concerns: the freedom of the individual and, closely connected to this, a rejection of the myth of a shared or group identity based on common cultural traits or conviction. In Spotvogel, Bouazza offers the reader a view on community. However, with Spotvogel and its imagined open community Bouazza does voice an appeal: to recognize and to resist the forces that fetter the desire to take off, that clip the wings of freedom and that try to reduce the individual to a representative of a cultural group. Spotvogel is the wholesale rejection of the repressive 'having in common' in favor of a community of fluid and changeable, singular-yet-plural individuals.
