Mêlée (Nancy)

Nancy's signature term for the event of a knot, an entanglement that is also a disentanglement. Distinct from mixture (which forms a new homogeneous compound out of two formerly distinct elements). The mêlée preserves the irreducible separateness of the entangled singularities even at the centre of the knot (BSP 5; cited by Morin Ch 8 §3, p. 190). The figure of mêlée is one of Nancy's central contrasts with MP's *Ineinander* / Verflechtung (which on Morin's diagnosis tends to dissolve into a regime of confusion).

Key Points

  • Mêlée vs. mixture: a mixture is the confusion of two things in a new homogeneous thing; a mêlée is the event of a knot, of an entanglement that is also a disentanglement. The latter preserves what is entangled in its irreducibility; the former dissolves it.
  • The Sarajevo / cultural-identity context: in *Being Singular Plural* 152–53, Nancy speaks of cities, languages, cultures, and forms of "identity" more generally as an indefinite mêlée of traits and characteristics. A mêlée presents a certain identifiable tone or style but cannot be contained in any exhaustive and fixed set of features.
  • Anchored at BSP 5: "the interlacing [l'entrecroisement] of strands whose extremities remain separate even at the very center of the knot [nouage]." The mêlée is the structure of being-with — what holds singularities together without dissolving their separation.
  • Distinct from MP's promiscuity / encroachment: per Morin Ch 8 §3, the central diagnostic contrast. MP's empiètement / Überschreiten / promiscuity is the "universal structure of world" (VI 234); a regime of mutual interpenetration. Nancy's mêlée refuses interpenetration: even at the centre of the knot, the strands remain separate.

Details

Why the term matters

Nancy is responding to a problem inherent in any plural ontology: how do you describe the with without collapsing it into a one or a whole? Confusion, fusion, mixture all give back the One; pure juxtaposition misses the genuine with-ness. The mêlée is Nancy's name for the third option: an entanglement that preserves what is entangled in its distinction.

The Morin diagnostic

Per Morin Ch 8 §3 (the central contrast), MP's Ineinander and Nancy's mêlée look superficially close — both are figures of intertwining. But they do opposite philosophical work:

  • MP's Ineinander: the two sides are always already two sides of one body, one world, one flesh; the gap between them is spanned by the total being of body / world (VI 148). It is in this sense that Saint Aubert (EC 380) worries about MP's "logic of promiscuity" evacuating separation.
  • Nancy's mêlée: the strands remain separate even at the very centre of the knot; the "between" is "neither connected nor unconnected, but falls short of both" (BSP 5). No spanning, no flesh-as-grounding-principle.

The difference is precisely Morin's écart-as-encroachment-vs-limit thesis.

Connection to partes extra partes

The mêlée follows from Nancy's redeployment of partes extra partes (the extra as place-of-differentiation, not undifferentiated void; see corpus-corporum). Where bodies are spaced-out from each other, their entanglement cannot be mixture — it must be a mêlée that preserves the spacings.

Connections

  • contrasts with *Ineinander* / Verflechtung (MP's late-ontology terms) — Morin's central diagnostic contrast (Ch 8 §3).
  • contrasts with mixture / fusion / confusion — the wrong figures for being-with.
  • follows from the Nancean redeployment of partes extra partes (see corpus-corporum).
  • parallels *écart* as unpassable limit (Nancy reading) — the mêlée is the figure of how écart still allows being-with.
  • connected to whateverness-quelconque — the entangled singularities are quelconque, retaining their concreteness across the entanglement.
  • connected to Nancy's Being Singular Plural ontology of community / being-in-common — les gens (people in singular plurality) rather than das Volk (people-as-one).

Open Questions

  • Is the mêlée compatible with empirical phenomena of true mixture (chemical compounds, biological hybridisation, language creolisation)? Nancy's contrast is ontological / philosophical; whether it holds across these cases is open.
  • Does the mêlée require a sharp distinction between "concrete strands" (which preserve their identity in entanglement) and "elemental fluxes" (which dissolve)? Ingold's world of materials might be read as the latter; Nancy might dispute the choice.
  • What politics follows from the mêlée? Nancy's Inoperative Community / Being Singular Plural deploys it as the figure of community; whether the politics is also mêlée-shaped is the consequential question.

Sources