The essays in this symposium invite you, reader, to share in the project, announced in James Chamberlain’s Undoing Work, Rethinking Community, of thinking through the conditions and possibilities of the postwork community. Written from distinct, if overlapping, theoretical perspectives, the essays nonetheless explore a common set of interrelationships: among freedom, love, obligation, work, and community. The result is testament to the ambition and depth of Chamberlain’s own reflections, but also to the spirit of generosity and critical engagement with which this project was taken up by the individual contributors. My task is simply to set the scene. In the book that serves as the departure for the essays that follow, Chamberlain offers a critique of “the work society.” The purpose is not, or at least not primarily, to offer a philosophy of work. Instead the target of critique is the underlying conception of “society” for which work (paid or not) is taken to be functional. As Chamberlain suggests, those who insist on an obligation to work adduce societal as well as individual benefits: employment, they think, “lays the foundation of a just, stable, and harmonious community” (2). It is with unpacking the model of society upon which this connection, between the obligation to work and the production of harmony, depends that Chamberlain is most centrally concerned. That model, Chamberlain shows, is premised on “an individualist social ontology, which treats society as an association of pre-existing individuals who are integrated into it by means of their paid work...” (19). Community is thus read as association, but more centrally as an association that is produced by the co-operative work of the individuals of which it is composed. It is, as Rawls puts it, society conceived as a “system of cooperation designed to advance the good of those taking part in it” (quoted at 41). Undoing the obligation to work as a condition of full inclusion in community, therefore, entails rethinking the terms of community itself. To do so Chamberlain draws on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, and in particular on his understanding of the “unworked” or “in-operative” community. Such a community is constituted neither by a substantive identity or set of communal values, nor by the integration and accommodation of individuals motivated by mutually antagonistic desires and fears. Indeed, it is not produced at all. Whereas a series of theorists examined by Chamberlain (Freud, Hardt & Negri, Gorz, among others) see community as itself a product of collective or individual work, for Nancy the relation is reversed. Community is inherent in the human condition; to exist is to be in community with others (in however distorted a form). Work is not a condition

中文翻译：

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詹姆斯·A·张伯伦（James A.Chamberlain），``不做工作，重新思考社区：对工作的社会功能的批判''（纽约州伊萨卡，康奈尔大学出版社，2018年）。

本研讨会的论文邀请您（读者）分享在詹姆斯·张伯伦（James Chamberlain）的“撤消工作，重新思考社区”中宣布的项目，以考虑后期工作社区的条件和可能性。这些文章是从独特的（如果有重叠的话）理论角度写成的，尽管如此，它们还是探索了一套共同的相互关系：自由，爱，义务，工作和社区。结果证明了张伯伦自己的反思的野心和深度，也证明了慷慨和批判性参与的精神，该项目由个人贡献者承担。我的任务只是设置场景。在本书作为随后论文的起点时，张伯伦提出了对“劳动社会”的批评。目的不是或至少不是主要提供工作哲学。相反，批评的目标是“社会”的基本概念，对于该社会而言，无论作品（有偿与否）都起作用。正如张伯伦所暗示的那样，那些坚持工作义务的人会带来社会和个人利益：他们认为，就业“为建立公正，稳定和和谐的社区奠定了基础”（2）。在揭露社会模式时，张伯伦最关注的是工作义务与和谐生产之间的这种联系。张伯伦表示，该模型建立在“个人主义社会本体论的基础上，该本体论将社会视为通过已有的有偿工作融入社会的个人的联合……”（19）。因此，社区被理解为协会，但更重要的是，它是由其所组成的个人的合作所产生的联系。正如罗尔斯所说，社会被认为是“旨在促进参与其中的人们的利益的合作体系”（引用41）。因此，不履行工作义务是完全融入社区的条件，这需要重新考虑社区本身的条件。为此，张伯伦借鉴了让·吕克·南希（Jean-Luc Nancy）的工作，尤其是他对“未工作”或“无效”社区的理解。这样的社区既不是由实质的身份或共同的价值观构成的，也不是由出于相互敌对的愿望和恐惧所激发的个人的融合和适应。确实，它根本不产生。鉴于张伯伦（弗洛伊德，Hardt＆Negri，Gorz等人将社区本身视为集体或个人工作的产物，因为南希的关系是相反的。社区是人类固有的条件；存在就是与他人共同生活（但是以某种形式变形）。工作不是条件