Staging community: a non-philosophical presentation of immanent social experience

This thesis develops a theoretical framework for articulating the experience of “community”, in a way that avoids appealing to hypostatizing identity concepts. It examines two seminal discourses of community, in the work of Georges Bataille and Jean-Luc Nancy, which attempt to grasp such a social experience departing from a philosophical ground, and it argues that each of these approaches constitutes a circular logic that places the reality of its “object” beyond the reach of signifying discourse. In order to break out of this circularity, and to render the reality of community effable, the thesis adopts the posture of François Laruelle's non-philosophy, which offers a way of re-viewing the philosophical materials according to their already-given immanence, and deploying them as real. It makes an original contribution to knowledge by developing a new, non-philosophical syntax for theorizing community in a non-totalising mode. This syntax, which we name a “theatre-fiction”, is occasioned by the thematic of “spectacle” that arises recurrently in Bataille and Nancy's thinking. It entails a non-standard re-conceptualization of theatre as a model for representation, and moreover as a ground for community. On this Laruellian basis, the thesis proposes a new way of understanding the performative staging of social identity, giving community as an experience- (of)-thought which manifests itself immanently, whilst tolerating an identity-of-the-last-instance with its concept.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Greenwich

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Lammin, Hannah Elisabeth

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Kennedy, Stephen
• Sporton, Gregory

• B Philosophy (General)
• PN2000 Dramatic representation. The Theater

Language dc:language

en