Issue of Essence in Acting on The Axis of Singularity and Community

Abstract

In this study, Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Inoperative Community, Maurice Blanchot’s The Unavowable Community, and Giorgio Agamben’s The Coming Community will be examined to discuss the issue of essence shaped around the concepts of singularity and community. If essence is read as an approach attributed to individuals through an appropriation or a definition, including: a quality, an identity, and a belonging that makes one immanent to themselves; this approach constitutes an obstacle to interaction, change, and transformation while restricting the area of community and the acting space in the actor’s relationship with their stage partners. Because the opportunity that includes the potential to carry the actor to the fictional/creative field, in Lacoue-Labarthe’s words, is hidden in the fact that they do not appropriate any quality in their body as their own. In this regard, Ecstasy as a matter of boundary and a state of opening up to what is outside (external) has an important place both for singularities that open up to community and for the actor who finds the opportunity to open up to the creative field together with the other. © 2024, Istanbul University Press. All rights reserved.