Who Is This "We"?: Absence of Community

Daniel M. Kolos is president of Benben Books in Orangeville, Ontario.

Both the search for a definition and the search for “community” veer
away from the objective realm and tread the narrow line of ethics with a
scant cry for either spiritual or psychological help. Thus fragmented,
separated from other realms of thought to which “community” is
intrinsically connected, the essays fail in the same manner the search
for community fails: by what they leave out, by “absences.” The
passion for the search exists, but so does the absence of the reality,
perhaps due to individual alienation, perhaps, as Howard Richards claims
in the eighth essay, due to the absence of new “forms.” This failure
is inherent in the arguments presented through the 10 essays. By
limiting themselves to a narrow definition of ethics, the authors
concentrate on what does not exist, rather than critiquing what does.
The result is a series of personal essays and intellectual exercises,
some of which make good reading.

The search for identity, whether it be of the self, home, ethnic or
interest group, right on through to a nation-statehood, fails essay
after essay. Such failure is required by the purpose of the exercise,
which focuses on the “Absence of Community.” In the process,
however, several individual essayists wax eloquent, even literary, as
they explore and expose very private and painful struggles for identity,
whether it be at “home,” in an aboriginal context, on the farm, in a
women’s studies program, or as part of a Canadian feminist movement.

A common theme that runs through each essay—sometimes identified and
articulated, other times remaining dormant and unexamined—is the
individual alienation and separation from Nature. It is perceived
throughout the essays as a “symptom.” What causes it, receives no
attention. One essay attempts to resolve it.

Although it is truly frustrating to read, essay after essay, all the
reasons we have for not achieving a “community,” the collection may
be called a celebration of “difference,” wherein it is easier to
claim to be an individual in the vast sea of humanity than for a group
of us to form a community, because the latter would only expose our
differences.