ABSTRACT
In the late 1970s and 1980s, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy undertook a reflection on discourses of shared existence, community, and politics. This was partly due to the circumstances of their early interactions and interest in a mode of commonality distinct from that of closed, avant-garde groups. Lacoue-Labarthe's thinking around politics and community therefore causes us to consider his collaborative writing in the light of his solo work, and vice-versa. Throughout Lacoue-Labarthe's thinking, 'philosophy' is endowed with a very specific set of connotations, making it clear that it is not the genre or discipline to which his investigations belong in any straightforward way. Despite announcing that 'the time for polemics is past', Ferry and Renault's position is both sweeping and provocative in the oldest polemical tradition. Lacoue-Labarthe responds to Heidegger's use of art or the artwork as metaphor for various orders of the political with an alternative strategy which involves establishing the aim of stepping beyond 'le fictionnement' or 'la "politique-fiction"'.
