Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community (1983)âa book that offered a critical response to an early essay by Jean-Luc Nancy on âthe inoperative communityââNancy responds in turn with The Disavowed Community. Stemming from Jean-Christophe Baillyâs initial proposal to think community in terms of ânumberâ or the ânumerous,â and unfolding as a close reading of Blanchotâs text, Nancyâs new book addresses a range of themes and motifs that mark both his proximity to and distance from Blanchotâs thinking, from Batailleâs âcommunity of loversâ to the relation between community, communitarianism, and being-in-common; to Marguerite Duras, to the Eucharist. A key rethinking of politics and the political, this exchange opens up a new understanding of community played out as a question of avowal.