The sense of being-in-common and international relations

IR and the question of living-together

The end of the Cold War brought the issue of “political community” into sharper disciplinary focus, as the inside/outside dialectic was no longer tied to two specific ideological camps, which were cleanly divided in terms of their geography. Released from these structures, new categories of identity have emerged, which cannot be surpassed in domestic politics. To the extent that this matter has been grappled with, it tends to be relegated to political theory, as it addresses the issue of living together within a common political space; no longer left to the “in between” of IR, it seems to fall outside of the latter’s purview. The issues, such as immigration, civil war, culture, identity politics, environmental issues, or terrorism, which are strongly related to the issue of living-together have become essential elements which influence the contemporary political environment. Most importantly, in light of dramatic changes in the agenda of contemporary politics, we see that it is no longer appropriate to investigate some of these political problems—especially immigration, identity, culture, or terrorism—in the context of the modern sovereign state and the particular practices of coexistence it provides. Such issues in contemporary world politics both show us the necessity of problematizing the issue of living-together and pointing out where the boundaries between international relations theory and political theory disappear. As Walker (1993) shows, there is no longer a need in the discipline to bolster the distinction between political theory and international relations. On the contrary, these new issues in contemporary international politics call attention to the necessity of the aid of political theory equipped with new tools to approach these sorts of political problems. Besides, the necessity of questioning the international as a phenomenon in terms of political theory stands before us as an important point.

International relations are (is) about a particular way of being together in this world, both as a form of knowledge produced by the discipline and as a sense that gives the meaning of our relationship with this world. This “sense” is based on the establishment of an intermediary category between the world and the individual. This intermediary category is based on both a sense of being inside and a model of being together. In this context, the phenomenon that we define as “international” is not only something that the discipline is interested in as a relation of a particular place of being-in-this-world, but also about the establishment of some already-made meanings (such as self/other, our ontological status of “I” and “We,” domestic/foreign and here/there) that discloses themselves in the relations between the individual and the (political) community.

Van der Ree (2015), in his article, as a critique against International Relations (IR) literature’s perception of international as a distance from everyday practices, discusses the possibilities of how the international can disclose itself in everyday life in different ways. According to Van der Ree (2015), even though “the international rarely discloses itself in our average everydayness. . .,” it discloses itself mostly in the practices of “othering” and the meaning of “the local and the nonlocal” (p. 789). However, in this paper, the interesting question is whether these disclosures of international in our average everydayness refer to an opening or a closure in relation to our ways of being-in-the-world. Problematizing the notion of “common” allows us to see how the phenomenon of the international is strongly linked with our everyday meanings and our closed-off ways of being-in-this-world. This highlights for us again the point at which the distance between political theory and international relations diminishes—as Walker (1993) suggested—by showing us the necessity that political theory problematize international relations as a phenomenon.

To see this, one must bring the notion of “community” into sharper focus. In most modern notions of community (Durkheim, 1957; Etzioni,1995; McMillan and Chavis, 1986; Selznick, 1992; Taylor, 1994; Tönnies, 2001), ¹ a notion of being-together is centered around a shared notion of a “commons,” or of things, practices, spaces, or beliefs held in common: an immanent substance (or perhaps, substrate), the presence of which allows one to be placed inside. As Italian philosopher Esposito (2013) argues, in this model, community is “understood as a substance that connected certain individuals to each other through the sharing of a common identity,” which corresponds to “the figure of ‘proper’: whether it was a matter of appropriating what is in common or communicating what is proper, the community was still defined by a mutual belonging” (p. 83). Therefore, this model of being-together-in-common carries within itself, in turn, certain meanings of physical, sensual, and ontological (for Heidegger) proximity and the coordinated or ontological space within which members of a community can be said to be located. This, then, is the source of an inevitable distinction between the domestic and foreign elements of political community. For this reason, studies regarding political community that endorse this distinction tend to devote themselves to the problem of solving or naturalizing foreignness, such that the “foreigner” can partake of the “being in common” of that community where she is physically domiciled. ² Hence, for example, the question of the “assimilability” of Turkish guest-workers or their descendants in Germany; of Syrian refugees in Scandinavia; or—five decades earlier—of Eastern European Jews in Alsace or East London or New York.

This is not to say that IR did not imagine notions of community that were de-linked from spatio-temporal proximity in the physical sense: consider English school notions of international society (Bull, 1977; Hedley, 1977; Linklater, 1990, 1998), with their emphases on either shared rules (Bull), or a shared sense of moral community (Linklater): what is at stake here is the possibility of an individual’s universal and moral presence in global politics (Linklater, 1990: 136–137, 1998: 10). Yet even so, this particular model of community tended to assume, rather than explicitly theorize, the ontological foundations of being-together-in-common. In other words, they provide an alternative perspective which might help to overwhelm spatio-temporal proximities of inside/outside logics of mainstream IR theories. However, we can see that this particular understanding—being-together as a mode of sharing a common substance—is still very alive in their perspective of how states and individuals can be together in a common space of the global world. Even this common space can be a world perceived as being shared by human agents or an international society as being shared by sovereign states, the main perception of the common is still linked to a particular understanding of being-together.

For its part, early post structuralist IR did take up this challenge, in a number of ways. Campbell’s (1992, 1998) Writing Security, for example, highlighted a fundamental gesture in foreign policy which drew the lines of state identity—whether through the procedures for targeting Soviet cities, or through the “national deconstruction” of the former Yugoslavia. Drawing on Butler’s theory of how gender and the body are performatively constructed, foreign policy became, on his account, a series of performances and practices which constituted state identity “through the inscription of boundaries that serve to demarcate an ‘inside’ from an ‘outside’, a ‘self’ from an ‘other’, a ‘domestic’ from foreign” (Campbell, 1992: 9). As we can follow in Der Derian’s (1987) genealogical analysis of Western diplomacy, there is an alienation between mutually recognized modern states. This alienation generates the absolute separation of the inside of the state—as a substance—from its outside.

These performative practices of foreign policy and diplomacy do not only work in the distinction of a state as a completed self-body separated from the other, but also locate where the sameness of the self—as a substance which brings individuals together by the organization of the modern state—is to be differentiated from the difference of the other. This dialectical location of sameness and difference can be conceived of as a foundational disciplinary moment, as it goes back to a Westphalian notion of sovereign space that is “central to the very constitution of international relations” (Inayatullah and Blaney, 2004: 23). Inayatullah and Blaney (2004) underline the literature’s acknowledgement of the sovereign state as a “domain where difference is translated into uniformity,” in which “difference is placed at a distance (managed within the boundaries of ‘other’ states and deterred by the defense of one’s borders) and resolved into ‘sameness’ within one’s own community” (p. 23). As with Walker (1993), the main essence of political community is to have a common-ness which is believed to be shared by the members of this community, constituted through an anarchical outside space of, and within which being-together-in-common is possible: being-together is ‘always already’ being-in.

Ashley (1988), in his genealogical analysis of anarchy, which is the founding concept of the discipline (shaped by realism), finds a hierarchical opposition between anarchy and sovereignty (p. 230). In this dichotomous category, sovereignty, assumed to be a hierarchically organized homogeneous and continuous presence corresponding to a completed self, gains a privileged position as a political ideal and a higher political presence (Ashley, 1988: 230). This privileged position of sovereignty is strongly related to a certain practice of coexistence. Mainstream theories of anarchy implicitly understand coexistence “as a condition of entities coming together to cohabit a particular geographical, social and political space, as well as requiring the explicit act of staying together” (Odysseos, 2007: xxiv). For Louiza Odysseos, this model of coexistence can only be thought and expressed through the “logic of composition” (p. xxv). According to this model, “coexistence appears only as the mere composition of units or entities, as is often assumed in IR, instead of being the prior and constitutive condition of their being” (p. xiii).

For Odysseos (2007), this logic starts with an understanding of the modern subject as a completed self which is “already fully constituted when it enters into relations with others, relations that are considered ontologically secondary to the subject itself” (p. xiii). Selves are not relational entities, where “the constitutive role of otherness in coexistence, and for selfhood itself, is obscured” (Odysseos, 2007: xiii). In short, this category of being with others denies its dependency on the presence of another; “the other is grasped instead as a similar[ly] nonrelational subject, its otherness reduced to what is knowable about the self,” and which is, thus, easily fixed and essentialized (Odysseos, 2007: xiii).

Odysseos’s valuable ethical project is to develop an alternative co-existential analytic of self and other through a deconstruction of the Hobbesian ontology of International Relations; through such an analytic, one might take a different approach and problematize the ontology of togetherness in relation to the mentality of international as a way of being-in-this-world that establishes a fundamental relationship between being-in and being-together. ³ In this sense, there is a parallel between the failure in Heidegger’s ontology of being-with and the ways that international as a phenomenon closes-off our modes of being-with-in-the-world. One can even say that the mentality of international that reveals these particular ways of being together in this world is deeply embedded in Heidegger’s ontology. In other words, even though Heidegger’s ontology provides an alternative analytic of co-existence, which alters the ontological lines of inside/outside, difference/identity, and self/other, there is a deficiency in his ontology derived from the problem of being-in-common where the self is taking place with other beings (selves) by sharing a common space of there. Heidegger’s ontology contains a particular understanding of being-with-in-common, where a space of self (as a meaning of Dasein) and a space of there overlap in a substantial space of common. Therefore we need to develop a critique of Heidegger’s there with an eye to rethinking the relationship between being-in and being-with. This requires a change in our perspective of how we are together with other selves in a particular common space, where we dwell and take place as a singular being.

Heidegger, being-in-the-world, and the failures of being-in-common

In Being and Time, Heidegger’s journey of seeking the meaning of being can be situated in his unique phenomenological perspective of understanding the meaning of being within being’s existential status of to be. For Heidegger (2010), “the ‘essence’ [‘Wesen’] of this being lies in its to be” (p. 41). This can be explained by Heidegger’s method of approaching the object of inquiry in the question, “what is X.” For Heidegger, “before naming the object of inquiry,” the stress in the question should lie on “is” ( Steiner, 1991 : 19). Traditional ontology is only interested in objectively present being as an ontology of a being. However, on Heidegger’s (2010) account, the characteristics of a being cannot be found in its “present attributes,” and they are not reducible to “such and such an outward appearance” (p. 41). Rather the question that concerns him is “possible ways for it to be, and only this” (Heidegger, 2010: 41, emphasis added). The ontological status of to be is none other than the existential status of being-in. In other words, in Heideggerian terms, being’s existential status of to be is fundamentally related to its spatiality where its beingness opens itself. The explanation of this link can be found again in Heidegger’s ontological formulation of the fundamental link between Dasein—literally, “being there”—a relation who(se) being is always conceived within a defined place (the “there”) where it is thrown. He hopes to link this to a being’s existential possibility of being-in-the-world.

This distinction—between being “there” and “in the world”—demands some further explication. Indeed, this further explication allows us to see the fundamental relationship between the modern state practices of being-inside and Heidegger’s notion of being-in, both shares same ontological assumption of living-together. For Heidegger (2010), “being-in-the-world is a priori necessary constitution of Dasein [.]” (p. 54). However, if being-in-the-world is essential in order to conceive of the existential status of Dasein, the category of being-in should be ontologically reexamined. To get at this, Heidegger (2010) distinguishes the ontological status of being-in from the category of insideness, which refers to the meaning that things are objectively present with one another (p. 56). To be sure, our everyday linguistic application of “in” expresses the relationship of two things. But in this relationship, one of the things is enclosed or surrounded by the other one—one‘s presence or position, linked to that of another. Heidegger (2010), by contrast, understands being-in quite differently—not as the geographical and mathematical relations of two beings, but instead as “the relation of being that two beings extended ‘in’ space have [with] each other with regard to their location in that space” (p. 54).

In the example of a glass of water, the water and the glass are “both in space at a location in the same way” (Heidegger, 2010: 54). In this vein, the water’s status of being-in a glass cannot be reduced to a relationship between these two beings—as one being inside of the other. Water’s beingness exists independently of whether it is “in” a glass, even if both the glass and the water are in the world in the same way. In other words, there is no difference in their status of being present in the world. The water is enclosed in the space of the glass, but its ontological meaning is not limited or delimited by this contingent state of affairs. Their categorical insideness might be their ontology in the sense of their mode of being-in or being together with the other object, but their spatiality is not limited by the other. They both are in the world in the same way and their categorical relation of being—one inside of the other—can only be meaningful in their spatial relations with the world.

However, Heidegger’s ontological definition of being-in does not mean that two beings, water and a glass, are inside of another being called the world. In contrast, being-in-the-world is ontologically linked to what Dasein means in Heidegger’s philosophy. Unlike the insideness of water in a glass, Dasein refers to dwelling in the world which requires an ontologically indivisible world as a necessary a priori (Heidegger, 2010: 54). In this sense, being-in-the-world already has the ontological status of Dasein and this depends on the point that the world cannot be separated as another entity which carries or contains beings. In this sense, Dasein’s being-in a space is ontological in the sense that it enables it to relate to its world. However, the world, in which Dasein is in, is a common space where it is together with other beings.

The spatiality of “world” as a common space causes a fundamental gap in Heidegger’s distinction of the categorical insideness and the ontological status of being-in. In this distinction, beings such as water, a glass or any kind of animal—which are not Dasein—are not able to be in the world in the same way as Dasein is able to. According to Heidegger’s understanding of the ontological category of being-in as the ontological status of dwelling in the world, Dasein’s worldliness is different than non-Dasein’s presence in the world. Contemporary French philosopher Derrida (1991) underlined this gap by pointing out that, for Heidegger, “the animal will never be either a subject or a Dasein” because they are not able to engage in “rapport to the other as other[.]” (p. 105). In other words, what sets Dasein apart from other beings is its everyday practical engagement (care) with other beings in the-there-space. Although Heidegger, with his structure of care, makes the relation to the other a part of Dasein’s ontology in his formulation of being-with (Mitsein), the common space of there in which the self and the other exist is still problematic.

Dasein’s relationship with “other” raises possible challenges to Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein in terms of subjectivity. When we take a deeper look at Heidegger’s critique of the Cartesian subject as a completed self separated from its outside, his approach is not an absolute departure from a particular subjectivity, a call for a self which is linked to a certain notion of being-in. “[T]he Self is not erased,” Janicaud (1996) notes, “but [is] stripped of . . .import as soon as the existential analytic is deployed [.]” (p. 52). Heidegger’s particular use of self—selbst—means “that subjectivity is neither destroyed nor emptied of content [.]” (Janicaud, 1996: 52). Heidegger questions the Cartesian subjectivity’s “reification, its substantialization, and its being ‘deprived of its worldhood’” (Janicaud, 1996: 52); yet even so, subjectivity is “preserved, even revived, through the fundamental role of the ‘Selbst’” (Janicaud, 1996: 52). Janicaud labels this revised Cartesianism “diaphanous subjectivity”; through it, we can see a possible formulation of Dasein which remains, in some limited way, a mode of being-inside: that is, of oneself enclosed by the place of “we” (i.e. community), embedded in the ontological mode of “there,” and, thus, is susceptible to the claim of something like a nationalism which becomes a destiny (a closure in the future moment) for those who live together in this space.

Even though in Heidegger’s ontology, Dasein (with a capital “d”) refers to a unique and singular experience of being, its singularity evokes a totalitarian gesture as a common essence for those who dwell in their world. In that vein, for Nancy (2008), the failure in Heidegger’s ontology of with can be found in the question of what kind of there (as a place where we are together) we must perceive for a plural coexistence (p. 5). In that vein, Nancy (2008) asks: “What kind of there for many? A common there or the there of each? But then, brought together in what way?” (p. 5, emphasis added). Along with these questions, Nancy problematizes the notion of common in terms of Heidegger’s ontology of with. In terms of the notion of common, the essential issue in Heidegger’s ontology of being-with is that Dasein’s ontological presence in the space of there becomes a closure which limits the ontological status of “I” into a spatial-temporal community which functions through some practices of (ontological and authentic) proximity among members. So Heidegger’s ontology is not adequate to problematize the togetherness of self and other, which is taking place in the spatio-temporal site of common. In fact, Heidegger’s ontology is strongly related to the nationalist practices of being-in, which gives the meanings of there-space.

Newly discovered 1984–1985 seminars of Derrida, which are not yet translated in English, highlight a fundamental linkage between the destiny of a people and the German nation, or at least a particular understanding of Germanness—which cannot be established as biological but rather social in nature—that is bound up with the nearness to another being and the ontological call/destiny of the homeland (Therezo, 2018: 18). For Derrida, Heidegger “is doing nothing but reproduce the ambiguity or equivocality of all nationalistic discourses. . .” (as cited in Therezo, 2018: 19). Even though Heidegger opposes biological-racial nationalism, which might be fundamentally linked to the ontic terms of togetherness, “Heidegger’s nationalism is cultural and linguistic, praising the landscape of the Black Forest and the poetry of Hölderlin” (Elden, 2002: 39).

All nationalistic discourses are strongly related to a sense of being-inside of a higher essence shared by those who are assumed as being-inside of a shared “We” feeling. This becomes a historical and spatial reason as to why some people are together “in” a particular place. The sense of being-in a certain place simultaneously corresponds to a production of inside space or a sense of being-inside which becomes a common-ness (a common essence) that situates people as being-together. In this sense, for example, the there-space of the Black Forest not only has a geographical meaning in terms of a nationalistic way of being-in, it becomes a common essence for our relationship with our “worldhood” and an intermediate category that gives meaning to how we are together in this world. Even though Heidegger, with the concept of Dasein, proposes the coexistence of the ontological categories of being and being-in-the-world, Dasein emerges as an intermediary category in the relationship of the ontological category of “I” with its world. The reason behind this is that although Heidegger assumes a more individual and intimate relationship between being and there-space, this relationship becomes a common ontological situation which finds its meaning in terms of Volk (the people). Here the concept of people is not ambiguous, but linked, as Derrida shows, to a national intermediate category. The ontological relationship between “Dasein” and “Being-with” is determined by a nationalist sense of being-in, as is Dasein’s relationship to its world. This means that the sense of being inside, embedded in the logic of international is inherent in Heidegger’s ontology, and this nationalistic being-in appears as an existential category.

Following Heidegger’s analytic of co-existence, Jean-Luc Nancy developed an alternative definition of common which supposed “the impossibility of fusion” around any substance or identity in the ontological category of being-together (Balibar, 2014: 31). This means that a thing, a substance or an identity cannot be represented in common (Balibar, 2014: 23; Davis, 2010: 8). In other words, for Nancy, community (as an ontological status of being-together-in-common) cannot be thought of as a common being which is represented and immanent in each part of those who are coming together in a particular space of “there.” In this sense, contrary to Heidegger’s common space of there which is limited by the notion of “the people,” that is, a search for an ontological authenticity and an authentic call for a homeland, Nancy (2008) distinguished his understanding of the common space of there from Heidegger’s understanding of it (p. 3–4).

For Nancy (2008), the “there” of being should be understood as a disclosure, which means that being is opening itself in this there-space (p. 3); therefore, the opening of being in there-space should not be closed-off by any totalitarian sense that defines the nature of common. In this sense, in order to treat this deficiency in Heidegger’s being-with, Nancy reveals an alternative definition of common which offers a way to comprehend the possibilities of plural co-existence of beings in the common space of there. For while Heidegger’s treatment of being-in allows us to notice the impossibility of ontological distinction between the inside and outside of the self by extending the ontological space of an individual self by displaying his ties to the outside space of there, the deficiency in the co-existence of plural Dasein should be considered with a new meaning of common which allows us to perceive the plurality in common space without addressing a liberal individuality.

When we think about liberal individualism, the state of being-individual depends on absolute separation of the inside space from the outside space of an individual self. However, Heidegger’s ontology underlines the impossibility of this Cartesian formulation of individualism—the definitive separation of Res cogitans (thinking substance) from Res extensa (extended substance) ⁴ —, which means that individual being cannot be distinguished ontologically from the place where he/she dwells. However, in Heidegger’s philosophy, the main issue can be found in how Dasein can be plural in the common space of there. In other words, this issue requires a deeper look into Heidegger’s term of being-with, and this term needs to be considered within another context of how we are together in common in our singular existence, but not an individual position placed relative to a common meaning of who we (the status of with) are as an individual who needs to be integrated or not. In order to rethink new ways of being-together-in-common, Nancy’s ontology of singular-plural can be utilized, which depends on the critique of, (or perhaps one should say: “rewriting of”) Heidegger’s being-with by formularization of a common in different terms.

Nancy and the radical ontology of with

Heidegger’s ontological formulation of being-in-the-world reveals the fact that the status of in cannot be only conceptualized as a preposition of a being, but being-in is an essential factor of the existence of a being—where the status of being-in is linked ontologically with a being’s status of to be. Moreover, Heidegger’s ontological access to the mode of being-in and his unique projection of how it is ontologically linked to our being in this world allows us to see how the assumed facticity of international relations—which depends on a particular form of being-in—functions through some practices of being-together-in-common. However, Heidegger’s ontological deficiency in the characterization of the relationship between spatio-temporal reality of there (as functioning in the nearness to the self (selbst)) and the common space of being-with results in a closure where the ontological ties between the self and the other is equated and settled within a certain meaning of there derived from a substantial meaning of common.

Nancy draws our attention to this substantial deficiency in Heidegger’s ontology of being-with and aims to radically rethink Heidegger’s ontology of being-with (Mitsein) and so offer up an essentiality of with. Nancy (2008) affirms Heidegger’s unique finding of “the first characteristic of the with as the refusal of the simple external ‘with’ of things which are only put together, only continuous to one another” (p. 3). Heidegger’s finding of the essentiality of with as an ontological category of a being deconstructs the self-sufficient positing of Cartesian subjectivity which proposes the category of the individual as “a single and undivided entity who relates him or herself to others of the community only secondarily, or who constitutes him or herself as a free subject” (Devisch, 2000: 241). However, Heidegger introduces this co-existential analytic of being-with to “the category of people ⁵ which will come to crystalize the possibility of Dasein to historicize itself” (Nancy, 2008: 3).

The reason behind this deficiency in Heidegger’s thought can be found in the way in which we have tended to comprehend the essential character of with as a particular logic of being-together-in-common which influences the whole of Western thought. In guiding our attention to this mentality in Western thinking, Nancy emphasizes the plurality problem in Heidegger’s ontological use of Mitdasein. First of all, for Nancy, Heidegger did not take the possible plural presences of Dasein as an issue in his ontological analysis. In other words, it is impossible to say something about what kind of common space for there Heidegger is imagining in his ontological formulation of being-with (Mitsein). With Nancy’s (2008) question, is this a “there” which implies a common space for all Dasein or is this a “separate there” for each Dasein (p. 4).

Nancy (2008) writes:

“How is Mitdasein possible? First of all, how should one picture it? As the Being-with of several Dasein, where each opens its own da for itself? Or as the Being-with-the-there, or maybe more precisely as a Being-the-there-with, which would require that the openings intersect each other in some way, that they cross, mix or let their properties interfere with one another, but without merging into a unique Dasein (or else the mit would be lost)? Or else—in a third way—as a common relation to a there that would be beyond the singulars? But what would such a there beyond be?” (p. 4).

We can see, then, that Nancy’s problematization of there is his departure from Heidegger’s ontology. So Nancy attempts to pick Heidegger’s essential question of being which should be thought with the question of community again at the point where Heidegger lost the thread (Devisch, 2000: 242).

In other words, even though Heidegger’s first ontological gesture in Being and Time takes the first step to release the chains of inner space of individual from his/her outer space and develops an alternative way to get away from the substantial perception of the ontological status of I by showing the status of with as an essential for the beingness of being, but this first characteristic of “with” vanishes in his enthusiasm to find a place for his German-ness in his dwelling in the space of an assumed German inside. The ontological category of there in Dasein (being in there) is limited by spatio-temporal presence of a particular community. Therefore Esposito (2010) thinks that at the end of the day, Heidegger’s Mitsein cannot escape from traditional modes of community and is equated with the existential status of being-in a particular community “that masters its own future by rediscovering its own purest origin” (p. 100).

Taking account of this failure in Heidegger’s ontology of being-with, Nancy reformulates Heidegger’s existential analytic by revealing a third mode of common which gives a new meaning of community in terms of different perceptions of being-in-common. For Nancy, there are three modes of common. The first two modes of common can be found in two different formulas of being-in: being individual-in-itself who shares a common-ness in its individuality and a wider subjectivity who is common for those who are in it. For Nancy (2008), this is “a fundamental disposition of our whole tradition: between two subjects, the first being ‘the person’ and the second ‘the community’. . .” (p. 5). However, for Nancy (2008), in this formulation, there is not any place left for our category of “with” (p. 5). Rather, we may be stuck in the category of “with,” which then gives the meaning of our togetherness with other beings in this world as provided by the phenomenon of the international.

On the other hand, the third perception of common depends on Nancy’s unique understanding of “sense” as a passage to presence ⁶ which requires the release from spatial limits of inside and outside at both the level of the individual and the community. It means that the limits and borders of singular and plural become blurred in their togetherness. However, this does not mean that this blurriness refers to an impossibility of the existence of singular beings. On the contrary, there are singular exposures, which cannot be totalized within any meaning or signification in the category of being-in-common. Their singularity does not come from their being-in-itself as an identical continuity in their beingness, but rather from their finitudes as a discontinuous exposure. Therefore, for Nancy, politics should not be “in charge of figuring,” which would depend on the building of a common figure—an origin or an end—for our togetherness in a particular political space, but should be “in charge of space and of spacing (of space-time),” which provides for openings to the there-space of being-with (Nancy, 2010: 50). This fluid and destabilized nature—which comes from trembled singular being who touches to the other—of togetherness as being nothing in common leads Nancy to develop a singular-plural space for the community (Nancy, 1991b: 61, 2000: 7).

If we follow Nancy’s rethinking of the original community, we can see that he reformulates Heidegger’s being-with in two layers by crystalizing the tension between individuality/community and immanence/transcendence. By using Heidegger’s ontology of being-with (Mitsein), he points out the impossibility of the modern bifurcation of the individual and the community as the first characteristic of our ontological category of being together. For Nancy (1991a), being-with is not a secondary mode added to “being-oneself or being-in-solitude” (p. 3). Therefore the status of with does not modify being because being is already being-with others in this world. That is to say that, the category of with is not another ontological mode of our being in this world, but it is our ontological passage which allows for the understanding of the categories of being oneself as being-in an individual self and being-outside of this individual self as being-in-common as, in a sense, overlapping and the same to the extent that it is their authentic mode of being. However, Nancy takes his critique of the substantial nature of Cartesian subjectivity even further and discloses Heidegger’s being-with which is enclosed by the space of there bordered by certain substances such as people and the homeland.

Nancy not only attempts to criticize the substantive formulation of individual subjectivity but also show the impossibility of any substance which defines our original category of being-with-in-common. Nancy (1991a) writes, “Being is not a thing that we could possess in common” (p. 1). But, it is quite shocking that if we all are beings, what does the statement that being is not a thing mean? Our first assumption is that if we are all beings, we are supposed to share this beingness in our being. However, Nancy’s approach is quite different in that it alters our perspective of being-in-common. As a possible answer to this issue, Nancy (1991a) continues this sentence by saying that “being is not common in the sense of a common property, but that it is in common” (p. 1). That is to say that, as being a being, what we share cannot be found in our individuality (as being-in-itself) but in the ontological status of with. However, this with is not a substantial space shared by those who are inside of it and this insideness does not make them similar to each other. It is a very challenging idea that alters our common perspective of how we are together in common. Nancy’s main challenging point can be found in what we share or how we share when we are together in common. This point differentiates Nancy’s perspective of how we should approach the ontological link between the beingness of being and the common space of there where the relations of with are taking place.

In order to clarify Nancy’s unique comprehension of how we share our common space, his example of a train and our togetherness in it might be helpful. The passengers who travel in the same train are “simply seated next to each other in an accidental, arbitrary, and completely exterior manner” and Nancy (1991a) refers to their accidental category of being in the train as “the banal phenomenology of an unorganized group of people” (p. 7). Those passengers are not connected, but they are also quite together inasmuch as they are travelers on this train, in this same space and for this same period of time” (Nancy, 1991a: 7). Those passengers share the common space of the train and are limited by the train, but their presence in the train cannot be reduced to an identity of the passenger which is assumed as a substantial element for all those who are in the train. Even though all of these people can be defined as a passenger because of their presence in the train, the meaning of passenger is not the same for all of them. In other words, the substance of being a passenger is not immanent for all of them in the same way. Maybe, to put it in a more accurate way to approach this issue, one can argue that there is not any immanent substance which makes them individual passengers or a part of a broader passenger-subjectivity, but only their immanent sense of being in the train. In this sense, being a passenger is no other than a sensing of one’s (or another’s) being-in-a-train which is an opening (disclosure) that cannot be fixed to or within certain elements of passenger-ness as an identity.

Hutchens (2005), in Jean Luc Nancy and the Future of Philosophy, outlines, Nancy shows the possibilities of three different forms of immanence in his work. The first one is “the immanence of atomic individuals in closed association with one another” (p. 33). In this immanence, the individual’s representation is closed in itself. In this closure of individual selves, the insideness is an individual moment (as being-oneself) as distinguished from the fixed exteriority according to the closed-in substance of atomic individual subjectivity. The second one is “the immanence of a group of individuals reflecting upon their cohesion as such” (Hutchens, 2005: 33). In this form, the immanence is closed in the category of being-such somewhere between self and other. In other words, this is a closed category of being-with. In this closed space of being-with, the mentality of being-inside is related to being-in a determined place limited by a figure (social representations of a nation, a group, or an individual) which is immanent “in” each member of the community. The last form is “the immanence of sense itself at the interstices of the irreducibly open relations of sharing” (Hutchens, 2005: 34). This third form is the immanence of sense which is the cement of the ontology of being-with and is the center of Nancy’s singular-plural ontology of our co-appearance in the world. In Nancy’s formulation of immanence, our togetherness in the status of we (our ontological status of being-with) is the sense which is immanent for all those who are taking place in the space of being-with and we are all open to the existence and the world at the same time. Therefore, for Nancy (1997), the world is the sense which is immanent to all of us (p. 55).

In light of Nancy’s working on the notion of sense, Hutchens (2005) underlines Nancy’s distinguishing these three versions of immanence into two groups: reflective (figural) and open immanence. The first two versions of immanence, which is the “general horizon of our time” is “an ‘immanence of mediation,’ in which there is a ‘here’ and ‘there,’ a becoming-other of the thing, the very formation of the subjective-objective dichotomy” (p. 34). Both of these totalitarian versions of immanence create the figural presence for those who are in the space of common which works by means of the fixation of space and time into a ground/foundation, an origin, or the end (as a destiny of a being). Such a fixation or replacement of some positions corresponds to the fundamental distinction of inside and outside in terms of the closure of the self (individual or nation) by means of identification, realization, and recognition. However, both insides’ relation to the outside is the same and depends on the coming out of substantial fixed insides into “their” exteriority through determined and pre-decided ways.

On the other hand, in Nancy’s use of the immanence of sense, an inside’s openness to exteriority is different in terms of the nature of limitation and how it functions in relation to the distinction between inside and outside. First of all, in Nancy’s terms, the limit between inside and outside is not fixed and settled as a place which distinguishes two determined geometrical spaces. Nancy’s use of limit shows the potentiality of the disclosure where (the) inside and (the) outside is not fixed in the self-presentation of an individual in a figural space or in their togetherness in the category of being-with. As Machosky (2004) succinctly puts it, Nancy’s unique approach to subjectivity can be found in his “defining the subject by its mortality, its limit” (p. 112). This limit is not a restriction, however, because “the subject holds this very limit in common with all other beings” (Machosky, 2004: 112). The limit in common is not a place which divides the space of common into some geometrical—one could even call it “ontological” when we think of Heidegger’s failure—fixed positions but a moment of disclosure where “portioning and sharing are exposed” (Nancy, 1991a: 8). Therefore, for Nancy (1991a), “the limit is nothing but this extreme abandonment in which all property, all singular instance of property in order to be what it is, is first of all given over the to the outside” (p. 8). However, as Nancy (1991a) says, this is not the outside of an inside (p. 8). In this sense, the limit (in common) is a passage to a difference and an exteriority without any fixed interiority. Therefore Nancy’s sense of immanence is open to an “undecidable future” which withdraws from settled space of inside and outside and singularities which “never serve as individuals together in a closed ‘immanent reality’, [but] only as an irreducible plurality of singularities composing insubstantial communities” (Hutchens, 2005: 35).

In this sense, being-in-common is not an ontological mode of being together with others whose place is fixed by their limit, instead, it is a spacing between finite beings whose limit is a disclosure where they are exposed to each other in the space of the-in-common. The originality of Nancy’s contribution is found in the formulation of the concept of limit in terms of finiteness in the moment of being-in-oneself. It is a finiteness in the continuity of being-in-oneself and is a rupture in the very next moment of the immanent existence of individual. This rupture is crucial to understanding the relationship between the self and the other with respect to their existence within the ontological status of being-with. Nancy’s formulation depends on his exploration of the fundamental relationship between the death of other and the ontological status of being-in-common. Nancy, following Bataille’s writings on death, underlines the link between the death of the other and the impossibility of immanence in communional togetherness.

Nancy (1991b) writes:

“Community is revealed in the death of others; hence, it always revealed to others. Community is what takes place always through others and for others. It is not the space of egos – subjects and substances that are at bottom immortal – but of the I’s, who are always others (or else nothing). If community is revealed in the death of others it is because death itself is the true community of I’s that are not egos. It is not communion that fuses the egos into Ego or higher We. It is the community of others” (p. 15).

The moment of the death of the other is the realization of the impossibility of their immanence. Their mortality is their essence of being-together in a common space but this essence is not immanent and cannot be grasped or realized as a common thing shared by those who are part of the community. It is a rupture in the sameness of the self and the other in a common space and in their individuality. In short, as Fynsk (1991) aptly puts it in the foreword of Inoperative Community, “death is an experience that a collectivity cannot make its work or its property, in the sense of something that would find its meaning in a value or cause transcending the individual” (p. xvi). Because death is a singular experience which cannot be substituted with other members, it is a rupture in the continuity of the immanence of humanity. All deaths are different and cannot be granted transcendent status vis-à-vis an infinite self of a nation or humanness. This lays bare the impossibility of community as a fusion which stems from cohesion of individuals who occupy the substance of the liberal capsulated individual or a wider subjectivity which is immanent in time and space.

Nancy (1991b) accordingly uses the term singularity instead of individuality and states that “the singular being, which is not individual, is the finite being” (p. 27). Individuation is all about the relations between closed entities that are dispersed into a substantial ground which is produced and determined as a map of presence. But for Nancy (1991b), “singularity does not proceed from such a detaching of clear forms or figure” (p. 27). On the contrary, singularity (which stems from finiteness of beings) is an opening to others and it is a disclosure from one singular to another, which is not fixed or set into the sameness or repetition of relations. In a coexistence of singulars, “there is contiguity but not continuity” (Nancy, 2000: 5). As illustrated in the example of the train, passengers who take place in the space of the train are contiguous and this limited space of the train is not a substantial thing which establishes the status of being-together in the train. On the contrary, even though the passengers are restricted by the insideness of the train and limited by the walls, this insideness is not an identical ground which is added to those passengers. In other words, this insideness is not a coordinated space where all relations are fixed into a Cartesian geometrical plane of x and y axes nor is it pre-determined by some definition of who is a passenger and what a passenger should do in the train. On the contrary, all passengers’ relations with other passengers are singular and in Levinas’s terms, are “unique” (Levinas, 2001: 114; Nancy, 2001: 116).

Most importantly, in a singular relationship between two passengers, the difference between these two is also unique and is not determined by their essence of being an individual as a passenger or being a part of a broader identity of “passenger-ness.” That is to say that the difference between the two cannot be found either in the distinction of inside and outside of an individual body or the wider subjectivity of a political community as captured in terms of a common identity. In this sense, Nancy’s perspective allows us to consider the possibilities of inside and outside on the basis that they are not just located in a plurality of individualities which is a coordinated liberal space of inside, but neither in the sameness of a national-state which is differentiated by way of foundational differences of outside spaces. Ultimately, this perspective challenges orthodox international relations’s understanding of being-inside of a particular community which is reduced to a particular sameness within/among members and is differentiated from a common identity of inside as set against an outside space of anarchy.

In addition, Nancy’s ontological perspective shows us potential new modes of being-in-common, while at same time his challenge to Heidegger’s being-with allows us to problematize how the phenomenon of the international is embedded in our ways of being together in this world and shapes our relationship with there-space. In other words, the international as a phenomenon can be found somewhere between our categories of being-in and being-with and it is still alive as a part of our everyday life. We cannot consider the survival of the logic of the international only in the context of the existence of the modern state in the global age. It is alive because it still gives us the sense of our relationship with the world and shapes our relationship with others both inside and outside of borders. This reminds us of the title of Walker’s (1993) book, demonstrating the need to address “international theory relations as a political theory,” as well as the need to problematize the ontological existence of the international via political theory.