Between the “You and I” and the “We”: Community in the Work of Jorge Portilla
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This article examines the concept of community in Comunidad, grandeza y miseria del mexicano by Jorge Portilla, one of the most significant works of 20th-century Mexican existentialist thought. Through a phenomenological critique of institutional forms of community life—such as the state, citizenship, and legal order—Portilla argues that these structures, in the Mexican context, fail to produce lived meaning or authentic recognition. In response, he proposes a model of community grounded in immediate interpersonal relations, the “you and I,” as the only possible space for authenticity. While powerful, this move risks foreclosing the possibility of a broader “we.” Engaging with the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Stanley Cavell, the essay argues that community can be reimagined not as a given structure or private intimacy, but as a performative act of public speech. Finally, it suggests that Portilla and the Grupo Hiperión, through their collective reflection on Mexican identity, were already enacting such performative affirmation: by publicly interrogating what binds them, they gave shape to a “we” still in the making.
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