Ownership of Identity

Jean-Luc Nancy believes that the in-between moment is not about what lays between subjects, as a subject of the ego, which for Nancy does not exist. Having intersubjectivity without subjects is important for Nancy because it points to a concept of self that is prior to a self that contains the property of an ego. The ‘as’ structures of self, by Nancy’s account, is not about ownership of identity, neither that of one’s own nor that of the other. Through the ‘as such’ structure of self, the ‘I’ as a self that owns an ego, gets displaced as follows: Ego sum=ego cum, being-with=thinking-with. As such, one’s presentation of self is exposed through a community, in being with others. This is in essence what Nancy is trying to do in revising the Cartesian logos as “Cogito Ergo Sum”, “I think, therefore I am”, which changes the gaze of one’s in accordance to rule following and execution of order. So if “order of thought” is what determines “order of execution”, then multiplicity of meaning encased in one’s experiences of the different as “praxis of meaning”, requires a non-subject-descriptor of the in-between that makes certain notions of behavior less mechanical while at the same time, less mysterious.