The heart of the matter: Jean-Luc Nancy
Abstract views: 27
/ 
PDF downloads: 34
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70116/3065457271Keywords:
Jean-Luc Nancy, currere, being-toward-death, curriculum theorist, seminarAbstract
Curriculum theorists write about things that no one wants to talk about. Currere is not just about lived experience, but it is also about death. And it is this that no one wants to talk about. This is what Heidegger called Being-Toward-Death. I write about a professor who died several days before his seminar began. That professor was Jean-Luc Nancy who was Jacques Derrida’s student. Derrida is a familiar name to curriculum theorists, but Jean Luc-Nancy might not be. Christopher Fynsk—a well-known philosopher and friend of Nancy’s—had the courage to teach Nancy’s seminar only a few days after Nancy died. I took that seminar. The year was 2021. The seminar was held at the European Graduate School. In that seminar I began studying Nancy’s work. This paper is an introduction to Nancy’s work.
Downloads
References
Adorno, T. W. (2007). Negative dialectics. Continuum.
Behar, R. (1997). The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Beacon Press.
Brault, P.-A., & Naas, M. (2001). To reckon with the dead: Jacques Derrida’s politics of mourning. In J. Derrida (Ed.), Jacques Derrida’s The work of mourning (pp. 1–30). The University of Chicago Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2000). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. The University of Minnesota Press.
Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, & the new international (P. Kamuf, Trans.). Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1996). Archive fever: A Freudian impression. The University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. (2002). Derrida. The Film (K. Dick & A. Ziering Kofman, Dir.). Zietgeist Video.
Derrida, J. (2005). On touching—Jean-Luc Nancy. Stanford University Press.
Dolar, M. (2018). Voice after Lacan. In After Lacan: Literature, theory, and psychoanalysis in the twenty-first century (pp. 23–40). Cambridge University Press.
Freud, S. (1915). Mourning and melancholia. In J. Strachey (Ed.), On the history of the psycho-analytic movement. Papers on metapsychology and other works (pp. 243–257). Hogarth Press.
Fynsk, C. (2002). L’irreconciliable. CR: The New Centennial Review, 2(3), 22–36.
Gasche, R. (2017). “Infinitely finite”: Jean-Luc Nancy on history and thinking. CR: The New Centennial Review, 17(3), 1–19.
Green, A. (1999). Work of the negative. Free Association Books.
Hallward, P. (2005). Jean-Luc Nancy and the implosion of thought. Oxford Literary Review, 27, 159–180.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper & Row.
Kierkegaard, S. (1980a). The concept of anxiety: A simple psychological orienting deliberation on the dogmatic issue of hereditary sin (R. Thomte & A. B. Anderson, Eds. & Trans.). Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1980b). The sickness unto death: A Christian psychological exposition for upbuilding and awakening (H. V. Hong & E. Hong, Eds. & Trans.). Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1983). Fear and trembling. Repetition (H. V. Hong & E. Hong, Eds. & Trans.). Princeton University Press.
Lacan, J. (1978). The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis: The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XI (A. Sheridan, Trans.). W.W. Norton.
Laplanche, J. (1999). Essays on otherness. Routledge.
Levinas, E. (1998). Otherwise than being: Or beyond essence. Duquesne University Press.
Macdonald, J. (1995). Theory as a prayerful act. Peter Lang.
Nancy, J-L. (1991). The inoperative community. The University of Minnesota Press.
Nancy, J-L. (1993). The birth to presence. Stanford University Press.
Nancy, J-L. (1996). The muses. Stanford University Press.
Nancy, J-L. (1997). The sense of the world. The University of Minnesota Press.
Nancy, J-L. (2000). Being singular plural. Stanford University Press.
Nancy, J-L. (2002a). Hegel: The restless of the negative. The University of Minnesota Press.
Nancy, J-L. (2002b). L’Intrus. CR: The New Centennial Review, 2(3), 1–14.
Nancy, J-L. (2006). Multiple arts: The muses II (S. Sparks, Ed.). Stanford University Press.
Nancy, J-L. (2013). Adoration: The deconstruction of Christianity II. Fordham University Press.
Nancy, J-L. (2016). Ego sum: Corpus, anima, fabula. Fordham University Press.
Nancy, J-L. (2021). A much too human virus. Taylor & Francis Group.
Rahner, K. (2004). Karl Rahner: Spiritual writings. Orbis Books.
Serres, M. (2000). The troubadour of knowledge. The University of Michigan Press.
Watkin, C. (2007). A different alterity: Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘singular plural.’ Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory, 30(2), 50–64.
Welch, R. V., & Panelli, R. (2007). Questioning community as a collective antidote to fear: Jean‐Luc Nancy's ‘singularity’and ‘being singular plural’. Area, 39(3), 349–356.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Symphony
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
