The Death of the Individual

It’s interesting to me that a number of the writer’s we’ve read this semester write about the “death” of something. Nancy’s talk of the death of the individual in trying to define community within the context of today’s society seems to be in accordance with Derrida’s death drive theory. In our attempt to define or categorize something, it becomes lost, and in a sense, dead. Nancy writes about the problematic theories of community and how the individual ironically gets lost, or dies, in the attempts to define community. It seems to me that our society proclaims, or maybe is receptive to, the idea of individuality- but only to some extent limiting the role of the individual as an individual within the community. Society promotes individuality up to the point where they can still control it, or is still considered acceptable by standards. If this is the case, is Derrida’s death drive at work? In society’s attempt to control the individual, we lose the individual, as the they becomes a product, an indisguisable part of that society. I’ve still been interested in the whole death drive theory, maybe because I’m still trying to understand it and in my attempt to do so am subjecting myself to the evils of the very thing I am trying to understand. (Perhaps that's taking it a little too far.) Placed within the context of “participation,” the death of the individual would literally kill any chance for participation, or participation would be limited to or solely in aid of the greater good of the community.