Where a collective forms or begins to form, there is already a minimum of shared order, a minimum of consistency of shared hopes and projects; there is also the shared betrayal of the non-existence which ultimately constitutes the collective. If there are no binding criteria regulating the dynamics and existence of the collective, then there is no collective, or there is only the non-existence or the pure possibility of a casting completely hidden in its latency. Whenever a collective is formed it becomes obvious what has to remain occluded: the collective itself as a dream, as an impossibility and latency. The ontological sense of the collective would have to be sought in the domain of dreams that are more than illusions or phantasms. There is the dream of a language which communicates with itself purely and without any detour, the idealism of listening to oneself speak. There is the dream of a subject that appears completely within its self-evidence, which radiates almost without matter; that is the dream of a soul overflying its corporality, the dream of the eternal, self-transparent ego cogito. There is the dream of a knowledge which no longer has to leave itself to be completely with itself: absolute knowledge identical with itself, pure intelligibility. There is the dream of a future that is completed already today by bending to the thinking that anticipates it. There is the dream of a community which creates its total meaning out of itself, its force and possibility, its stability and duration; dream of a community which is what it is for good reasons and exists per se. The collective, its appearance in the space of history — of cultural, social, political texture — denotes a dream completely different from these dreams. The collective is the dream that interrupts merely dreamy consciousness, the imaginary, and leads it to its limits. The collective is the dream which recognizes itself as impossible.