‘Art is always the art of making a world’, affirms Jean-Luc Nancy. Taking into account the philosopher’s recent involvement in two ‘exhibitions’ in which he played an active role, both ‘subject’ and object’ in Trop. Jean-Luc Nancy (Montréal, 2005) and co-commissioner to Le plaisir au dessin (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 2007), this article probes into this nuclear formula — art, making, world — at the heart of Nancy’s aesthetic, philosophical and political stand: first, by examining how his thought is grounded in the ‘ cum’, the ‘avec’, which takes place between art and the world, art as world; second, by assessing how this ‘making’ occurs from within the form of art, through the ‘forma formans’ or through a methexis remodelling mimêsis at its core; and last, but certainly not least, by showing how this aisthesis is also and foremost political in its very making.
