The impossibility of community and the possibility of democracy

Abstract

The author attempts to problematise both the theoretical and the political pertinence of the category of the community. In her inquiry into the nature of this category, the author examines one of the most radical theses of contemporary political thought, namely that »the real of the world is the community insofar as it is impossible.« In analysing Kelsen’s conception of a democratic political community, the author demonstrates the ways in which this approach, which treats the community as a problem, or more precisely as a place of encounter, an intersection, between law and the political, avoids the abyss of the real.