Jean-Luc Nancy (1940–2021)

Nancy (1940-2021) was a devout fan of On Kawara, whose own work mused on death, time and existence. ‘On Kawara’s question is how this inexposable can be exposed. (In a certain sense, it is perhaps a question which the arts never cease to take up and pass between themselves: how to grasp the ungraspable of passing, how to grasp the pure conjunction of passing and presence, of fleeing and stasis?),’ he wrote in 1997.

‘On Kawara gathers the time of men, measurers of time. A million years back, a million years ahead. Between the two, the space where we are: we here now, as much as and as everyone, at every moment and in every place. But everyone, also, in the present of he who makes the work, and who withdraws from it as he opens it, who withdraws from it as he exposes it.’… (mehr)

This’ll make you want to re-read everybody you should have been re-reading anyway, the questions posed are truly exceptional and perfectly (un)timely, answered by two intellectual juggernauts at the top of their game. Here’s a rather simple exchange in the grand scheme of the discussion, but I liked it quite a bit.


BADIOU
Since the Greeks, I think that the gods, in many different manifestations, haven’t ceased to die—and to rise again, here and there.

NANCY
But if they really have risen again, there have also been many false resurrections. But doesn’t that also mean that the task of philosophy cannot simply be to rediscover or reach a point where “it” will be given again? “It” being the truth. Because we could then know it (anew) in its entirety as given? Or because it—the true—would begin to be given again?

BADIOU
I think that the task of philosophy is to find rational and shareable protocols so that humanity isn’t poisoned by its mourning of the death of the gods.… (mehr)