ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a number of contemporary socio-political discourses on community. These reveal the current uncertainty regarding conceptions of communal unity and ethnic diversity within French Republic. The chapter analyses works by Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy in order to consider the ways in which they can be seen to contribute to this debate, and to identify the political implications of their thought. The theoretical deconstruction of the concept of 'in common' takes place against the background of socio-political discourses describing a transformation in perceptions of communal organization in France. One of the difficulties with Derrida's analysis in Politiques concerns the manner in which he shifts obliquely between a discussion of private friendship and a consideration of the wider, democratic community. Nancys La Communauté désœuvrée describes the empty frame of the community of radically singular beings. The work testifies to a contemporary opening out of communal structures, and reflects on the separation of various entities from one another.
