Abstract
This episode is part one of four of the lecture series [HTA 17] on Jean-Luc Nancy’s “Of Divine Places” [1986], in The Inoperative Community [1991].
Primary Source
Nancy, Jean-Luc. “Of Divine Places.” In The Inoperative Community, translated by Michael Holland, [2026] Second V., 110–50. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1991 [1986].
Guiding Questions
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What is the significance of the wink?
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How does the wink replace the instant surface of art with the face of the gods?
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How does the smile of the gods occur?
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Where are the gods? Where is God?
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What does the death of God mean for Nancy?
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How are coming and departing related for divine places and for the gods?
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How does the god appear and disappear? Offer and withdraw?
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What are bare places?
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Why are the temples deserted?
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Why is God’s nature essentially lacking as a no god rather than as a lack?
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How have God, the gods, and my God all abandoned us?
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What are the importances of exposure and destitution in Nancy’s argument?
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How does no presence — of nothing as void — allow for a god’s return?
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Who is my God? [A singular address from a singular subject.]
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How does our shared destitution, exposure, and abandonment before the face of our wandering god — gods who have long abandoned us or will nevertheless soon leave anyway — connect us? How does this mirror our connection through being’s originary co-spacing and co-origination via mitsein in other Nancy texts?
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How does the God differ from a god?