This is a study of unparalleled richness and acuity. Taking his starting-point in a landmark intellectual exchange between Nancy and Blanchot in the 1980s, Hill sheds important light on key debates in French and European thought of recent decades, whilst also relating these issues back to the politics and intellectual currents of the 1930s, and flagging up the pertinence of these contexts for our own fraught contemporary political scene.

Ian Maclachlan, Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford

Leslie Hill examines Nancy’s strange change of direction in his response to Blanchot’s thinking of community, and is the first to explain in meticulous detail how and why Nancy, while still admiring Blanchot, recently began to attack the famous writer who was, like him, Derrida’s friend in thought. This is an impressive, compelling, and original contribution to an ongoing debate.

Christophe Bident, Université de Picardie Jules Verne