Rumor, an Anarchimedium

Abstract

Beyond the only text Jean-Luc Nancy explicitly dedicated to it (‘Rumoration’ in La Ville au loin), rumor lurks in the background — under the surface — of any discourse on community, or on being-with. Following closely Nancy’s thought process in ‘Rumoration’ (Nancy presents himself as walking, wandering in the city), this article interweaves fragments of a genealogy of rumor, from the ancient Greek logopoios to today’s ‘fake news’. But rumor is precisely what evades genealogy, so although it can be thought of as an archimedium (pure mediality, as Maurice Blanchot suggests), its floating texture, made up of references to references, turns it into a kind of anarchistructure.