Exclusion: "we" and "they"
Another thought complicates a potential romantic conception of collectivity. It is related to the power dynamics of the "we" in contrast to the "they". Who decides who can participate in the "we" and who is excluded? (I am thinking of all sorts of essentialist communities, nation states, etc.) Since the sphere of the "we" can easily turn into a community that inadvertently or deliberately immunizes itself from alterity, often in contradictory ways, by producing boundaries and exclusionary mechanisms.
Annotated by EW