Being in Myth and Community: Resistance, Lived Existence, and Democracy in a North England Mill Town

Abstract

‘Community’ has long been critiqued in academic circles as a social construct with the potential to subsume and exclude individuals under a determination of collectivity. In contrast, community continues to be posed as an ideal in urban policy, particularly in the United Kingdom. In this paper I employ Jean-Luc Nancy's thinking of community as myth and as existential being to interrogate the thorny issue of how community is constructed and the effects of those constructions on being and living in a place. I explore the constitution of collectivities and their interruption by lived existence in an urban regeneration project in north England, where a proposal to demolish and renew housing was contested by local residents. I argue that a Nancian lens provides a nuanced view of how myth and being are entangled and requires one another to ensure a vibrant democratic politics rested on an openness to alterity.