Im-mundus or Nancy’s Globalising-World-Formation

Contrary to what many believe, Jean-Luc Nancy is not an "alter-mondialiste" and he does not advocate to go ‘beyond’ globalization. As the prefatory note to his book, The Creation of the World clearly intimates, Nancy’s understanding of the world is much more nuanced, taking both the whole world, as it forms itself, and the processes of globalisation. Such a nuanced take is encapsulated in his use of the crucially split latinate word, im-mundus. Im-mundus stands for the way we create and produce the world, a gesture that stems paradoxically from out of no-thing and yet is some-thing that is with and without reason. With such a focus, this essay shows that Nancy’s attempt to expose the liminal stance of the world is an eminently political gesture that helps us to reopen, as he says, ‘each possible struggle for a world,’ and in the process, fight against this pernicious growth of the wasteland, to recall Nietzsche’s famous cry. The essay is published in an edited collection by Edinburgh University Press alongside other well-known Nancy specialists such as François Raffoul and Ignaas Devisch. The originality of this essay consists in correcting a common misconception amongst English-speaking Nancy scholars that originated in a mis-translation in one of his books. It makes a significant contribution to knowledge by focusing on the split word im-mundus as a key concept in the fight against the powers of financial globalisation.