Abstract

Beginning and ending with Jacques Derrida's anecdote about kissing Jean-Luc Nancy, this essay traces the disparate, yet entwined, thought of Nancy and Derrida on the amorous and tactile basis of philosophy and politics. While Derrida acknowledges, via his reading of Nancy, the affective basis of the political, each develops this insight differently: Derrida analyses friendship and democracy, Nancy contentiously links love and community. Nevertheless, these differing approaches intersect via a shared debt to Levinas; with Nancy developing Levinasian love into a conception of community, and Derrida transforming it into a theory of hospitality and democracy. Yet, there remains a melee of engagement and disagreement, transformation, deviation and recomposition that characterizes the exchanges between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy.