ABSTRACT
The strategy, it is sometimes suggested, bears a similarity to the classic three-stage speculative dialectic. In the prefatory “Coda” or tailpiece to a recent collection of papers, assembled with the help of Ginette Michaud, in which he examines the rivalry or dialogue between the literary and the philosophical, each of which is said not only to be in search of its own truth, but also, and in all senses of the word, to be forever questioning the truth of the other, Nancy begins for instance by underlining the opposed yet symmetrical characteristics of the two. If the word fragility seems appropriate, it is because, on Nancy’s own submission, as people shall see, it is one of the possible names for the neither/nor or the in-between. In the title of Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe’s text – “Noli me frangere” –, two different, contrasting, even opposed meanings compete, then, for attention.
