The Community of Those Who Have Nothing But Cancer in Common

In The Community of Those Who Have Nothing is Common, Alfonso Lingis begins his exploration of the "other community" with the story of those dying in hospital. The spectre of mortality is constricting and limiting; yet, within the milieu of finality, individuals are freed from many constraints, opening doors to new possibilities. In facing our own mortality, we recognize "others" grappling, like ourselves, with insoluble questions, while trying to work out how to act. In the darkness, chaos and terror of diagnosis and treatment, communities are thereby formed of individuals who have nothing but their cancers in common, who choose to face their deaths and the impending nothingness together. Utilizing empirical data from an ethnographic study of cancer patients in a hospital, we reflect on Lingis' notion of the other community, seeking to respond to his questions: "Is the death that isolates each one a common death? And can it be identified as nothingness?".