Nancy tries to describe the possibility of an intrinsically anti-totalitarian community. This would be a way of being together which is not subordinated to any totalizing idealogy, whether of race, nation, individualism, collectivism, expansion, domination of nature, utilitarian calculation, techno-theo-logico transcendence, etc.

How would we articulate the possibility of such community? It resists summarization¹, but the passage I’ve found most evocative and perspicuous is the following. Here, Nancy differentiates community from organization:

Organic totality is a totality in which the reciprocal articulation of the parts is thought under the general law of an instrumentation which cooperates to produce and maintain the whole as form and final reason of the ensemble (at least this is the way the “organism” has been conceived since Kant: it is not obvious that a living body is to be thought only according to this model). Organic totality means the totality of the operation as means and of the work as end. But the totality of community–by which I understand the totality of community resisting its own setting to work–is a whole of articulated singularities. Articulation does not mean organization. It refers neither to the notion of instrument nor to that of operation or work. Articulation has nothing to do, as such, with an operative system of finalities–although it can no doubt always be related to such a system or be integrated into it. By itself, articulation is only a juncture, or more exactly the play of the juncture: what takes place where different pieces touch each other without fusing together, where they slide, pivot, or tumble over one another, one at the limit of the other–exactly at its limit–where these singular and distinct pieces fold or stiffen, flex or tense themselves together and through one another, unto one another, without this mutual play–which always remains, at the same time, a play between them–ever forming into the substance or the higher power of a Whole. Here, the totality is itself the play of the articulations. This is why a whole of singularities, which his indeed a whole, does not close in around the singularities to elevate them to its power: the whole is essentially the opening of the singularities in their articulations, the tracing and the pulse of their limits. (76)

Imagine a way of being together, of being in community, in which that togetherness cannot eclipse or subordinate those who gather, because “the totality is itself the play” of the articulations that differentiate each from the other (and connect each to the other). Imagine a community which is “essentially the opening of the singularities in their articulations, the tracing and the pulse of their limits.”

Community means, consequently, that there is no singular being without another singular being … that there is no communion of singularities in a totality superior to them and immanent to their common being.

In place of such a communion there is communication. Which is to say, in very precise terms, that finitude itself is nothing; it is neither a ground, nor an essence, nor a substance. But it appears, it presents itself, it exposes itself, and thus it exists as communication. In order to designate this singular mode of appearing, this specific phenomenality, which is no doubt more originary than any other (for it could be that the world appears to the community, not the individual), we would need to be able to say that finitude co-appears or compears (com-paraît) and can only compear: in this formulation we would need to hear that finite being always presents itself “together”, hence severally; for finitude always presents itself in being-in-common and as this being itself, and it always presents itself at a hearing and before the judgment of the law of community, or, more originarily, before the judgment of the community as law.

Communication consists before all else in this sharing and in this compearance (com-parution) of finitude: that is, in the dislocation and in the interpellation that reveal themselves to be constitutive of being-in-common – precisely inasmuch as being-in-common is not a common being. The finite-being exists first of all according to a division of sites, according to an extension – partes extra partes – such that each singularity is extended (in the sense that Freud says: “The psyche is extended”). It is not enclosed in a form – although its whole being touches against its singular limit – but it is what it is, singular being (singularity of being), only through its extension, through the areality that above all extroverts it in its very being – whatever the degree or the desire of its “egoism” – and that makes it exist only by exposing it to an outside. This outside is in its turn nothing other than the exposition of another areality, of another singularity – the same other. This exposure, or this exposing-sharing, gives rise, from the outset, to a mutual interpellation of singularities prior to any address in language (though it gives to this latter its first condition of possibility). Finitude compears, that is to say it is exposed: such is the essence of community.

(29)

We see an image of such community take shape in reciprocal, responsive, rupturing dialogue. The word “rupture” indicates a dialogue which is not a mechanical convergence upon a predestined agreement, but rather an interplay of saying and remaining silent that is transformative. In such dialogue, the communicating exposes each to the other: “each one articulated upon itself or in itself, facing the other, at the limit of itself and of the other”. In such dialogue, there can be rupture, transformation–“tracing” and “pulse” of our limits–because each saying is prepared to interrupt itself to make room for receiving what the other has to say, and how the other is in their saying.

Dialogue, this articulation of speech, or rather this sharing of voices is, in the sense I am trying to communicate, “literature”.

For Nancy, in this work, “literature” is the name for communication which interrupts itself, and in so doing makes room for the space to receive the transformation of the other. Literature, the “writing that interrupts itself”, is communication that limns the countours of the singular beings who are together in community.

Literature interrupts itself: this is, essentially, what makes it literature (writing) and not myth. Or better, what interrupts itself — discourse or song, gesture or voice, narrative or proof — that is literature (or writing). Precisely what interrupts or suspends its own mythos (that is to say, it’s logos). (72)

Programming is a form of writing. Can it be a form of literature? Given types-as-propositions/programs-as-proof, where

… the proof of the goal can be seen as creating a program to compute a function meeting a certain specification. We say that the proof acts as a program. This proofs-as-programs principle is a consequence of the propositions as types principle.

we get programs as a form of proof, which is a form of literature. Imagine programs that interrupt themselves, that invite–far beyond mere interaction--intervention from those who write/read/run them. Think on the possibility of a “computational communism” or, perhaps better, a “programmatical communism”.