Jacques Rancière: An Introduction offers the first comprehensive introduction to the thought of one of today's most important and influential theorists. Joseph Tanke situates Rancière's distinctive approach against the backdrop of Continental philosophy and extends his insights into current discussions of art and politics. Tanke explains how Rancière's ideas allow us to understand art as having a deeper social role than is customarily assigned to it, as well as how political opposition can be revitalized. The book presents (...) Rancière's body of work as a coherent whole, tracing key notions such as the distribution of the sensible, the aesthetics of politics, and the supposition of equality from his earliest writings through to his most recent interventions. Tanke concludes with a series of critical questions for Rancière's work, indicating how contemporary thought might proceed after its encounter with him. The book provides readers new to Rancière with a clear overview of his enormous intellectual output. Engaging with many un-translated and unpublished sources, the book will also be of interest to Rancière's long-time readers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Rancière Now?Joseph J. Tanke (bio)I. IntroductionAs philosophy's representative at an art college, a question is put to me by my colleagues, students, and other art-world types frequently enough that it is worth considering systematically: Why Rancière now? The query is in large part prompted by a recent issue of Artforum devoted to the work of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, the publication of which caps (...) a seemingly overnight ascendance within discussions of art and politics. The very temporality of the question indicates that the discovery of Rancière by art professionals is a relatively recent development. Why is this taking place now? To begin to answer this question, we must first understand something about the current relationship between theoretical discourse and artistic practice.That Rancière is only now beginning to be discussed within the art world is indeed surprising, given the long-standing reliance upon theoretical approaches and the fact that Baudrillard, Derrida, and Deleuze now function as standard reference points. While it would be incorrect to say that Rancière was an unknown quantity in the Anglophone world until recently, the sense of revelation suggested by the query "Why now?" must be understood in terms of the ongoing exchange between European theory and contemporary art. This is a conversation that, independent of one's perspective as to whether it has had positive or negative consequences, cannot be denied. With this relationship between Continental philosophy, art making, and critical discourses, one is justified in asking, Why is Rancière only now coming to be read with any seriousness in art circles? The point is sharpened when we note that Rancière's work, unlike that of some of the more [End Page 1] celebrated names, is more readily suited for an interface with critical art discourse, concerned as it is with aesthetic issues and the analysis of contemporary art.One might be tempted to find lurking behind our question a certain amount of suspicion about further incursions by theory and detect a sense of exasperation at having yet another French name to pronounce. Those of us who find this interaction between art and theory edifying, however, should not simply shrug off this question and attribute it to an aversion to philosophy, or to a backlash against the excess of the past two decades. Understanding the context in which the question is posed allows us to expand it. And, while not all would agree, I think it is safe to say that there is a tacit consensus that fruitful arrangements between art and philosophy can be forged. With this situation in mind, we might, therefore, transform our question into something like the following: What might Rancière contribute to the work of the nonphilosopher, placed, for good or ill, within a dispositif wherein art and European theory discourse about many of the same phenomena, but in different idioms? The advantage of this formulation, of course, is that it allows us to avoid many of the facile responses to our initial question, variations on a theme suggesting that Rancière is simply one of the few members of that esteemed generation of thinkers still living and that the turning to his work is indicative of a generalized anxiety about the future of theoretical developments. We might also, in thus expanding our question, sketch an answer directed at those working at the edges of their respective disciplines: philosophers, artists, critics, historians—in short, all those interested in questions of contemporary culture. In accordance with what Rancière describes as the fortuitous breakdown of specializations, my efforts in this essay are intended as a contribution to an interdisciplinary conversation that is grappling with the intellectual issues raised by works of art, their reception, and the historical discourses that are created around them.II. To Avoid Two Discourses of MourningThe temporality of our question, why now?, is hinted at by Rancière at various points throughout his own work and pertains to what might be characterized as the default theoretical position of art, that of "mourning." For Rancière, this mourning takes two major forms: spectacle and the impossible. The former finds its genesis... (shrink)

As philosophy's representative at an art college, a question is put to me by my colleagues, students, and other art-world types frequently enough that it is worth considering systematically: Why Rancière now? The query is in large part prompted by a recent issue of Artforum devoted to the work of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, the publication of which caps a seemingly overnight ascendance within discussions of art and politics. The very temporality of the question indicates that the (...) discovery of Rancière by art professionals is a relatively recent development. Why is this taking place now? To begin to answer this question, we must first understand something about the current relationship between .. (shrink)

For W. E. B. Du Bois, the tragedy of Reconstruction was that its achievements were overthrown and erased from collective memory. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction corrects this, claiming enslaved people who fled plantations self-emancipated, thus enacting a “general strike against the slave system.” Yet Du Bois contravenes his general strike thesis when he quotes without rebuttal several Union officials who spoke of the formerly enslaved in degrading, nonagentic terms. I turn to Jacques Rancière’s politics of dissensus to understand why (...) Du Bois quoted such racist views without comment. In Rancière, political actors “stage a scene” of equality that is shared, even among parties in conflict. Recording conflicting perceptions of the strike, highlighting divisions that persist despite momentary advances of equality, Du Bois’s reading of the general strike is dissensual in Rancière’s sense, I argue. But Du Bois also offers a valuable corrective to Rancière, whose account of the first plebeian secession erases a different general strike from memory. Rancière reads the Aventine as an event of confrontation unconnected to the collective action that Du Bois summoned from the archive and named “general strike.”. (shrink)

This article compares the accounts of politics found in the work of Adriana Cavarero and Jacques Rancière. It argues that when Cavarero offers a formal account of politics she thinks politics with...

The fragility of democracy and the political aesthetics of public art -- Voices and places: the space of public art and Wodiczko's the homeless projection -- Democracy's "empty place": Rawls's political liberalism and Derrida's democracy to come -- Public art's "plain tablet": the political aesthetics of contemporary art -- Democracy and public art: Badiou and Ranciere -- The political aesthetics of Chicago's Millennium Park -- The political aesthetics of New York's National 9/11 Memorial -- Public art as an act of (...) citizenship -- Badiou on "being and the void.". (shrink)

Thayer-Bacon uses this opportunity to further explore Rancière's ideas concerning equality as described in The Ignorant Schoolmaster and their connection to democracy, as he explains in Hatred of Democracy. For Rancière, intelligence and equality are synonymous terms, just as reason and will are synonymous terms. Rancière recommends the only way to really teach a student is by viewing the student as an equal. Thayer-Bacon learned to view students as equals through her experience as a Montessori teacher, and (...) so she brings Montessori into conversation with Rancière to further explore the idea of equality between teachers and students, as well as between citizens in a democracy. There are problems with both Rancière's perspective and Montessori's that feminist theory, in the form of a relational ontology and epistemology, can help us solve by finding our way out of the paradoxes of democracy and on to trusting our students, our future democratic citizens. (shrink)

Este artículo interroga críticamente la pretensión de Jacques Rancière de pensar la política sin referencia a espacios sociales ni a las relaciones de poder que tienen lugar en ellos. En este texto se pretende mostrar que estas descripciones y cartografías de los espacios sociales operan como presupuestos ocultos de la teoría rancieriana, a pesar de ser rechazadas por el mismo filósofo francés como elementos fundamentales de la reflexión sobre la política. El artículo se acerca en la primera parte a (...) las objeciones del pensador francés en contra de las teorías que derivan la naturaleza del conflicto político de la comprensión de los conflictos sociales, como el marxismo. En la segunda parte se muestra que el concepto rancieriano de la política, sin referirse a descripciones sociológicas de la sociedad como las del marxismo, caería en contradicciones internas a la hora de vincular la política con la emancipación, pues la figura de la actualización de la igualdad no basta para definir el carácter emancipatorio la irrupción política. (shrink)

En la filosofía de J. Rancière es posible poner en evidencia una voluntad recurrente por afirmar y verificar la «igualdad de las inteligencias» que pasa, inicialmente, por el campo de la educación en su investigación sobre los postulados de J. Jacotot, un singular pedagogo francés del siglo XIX, y que desemboca en la política en su vínculo con la estética. En este artículo nos vamos a centrar en sus primeros trabajos, sobre todo, en su libro El maestro ignorante, para (...) plantear de qué manera puede hablarse de una «emancipación estética» en su filosofía para, luego, pasar a dilucidar las relaciones que este filósofo contemporáneo establece entre el arte, la estética y la política.Palabras clave: J. Rancière, Teorías de la emancipación, Estética y política, Educación estética, Políticas estéticas, Arte crítico o político. (shrink)

The paper deals with the problem of representation on the background of J. Rancière’s political philosophy, in which he rejects the concept of the unrepresentable. The resolution of the problem follows from the confronting of two conceptions of the unrepresentable: that of the esthetics of the sublime in Kant and Lyotard and of the politics of prohibition in Foucault on one hand and Rancière’s understanding of sharing the perceptible on the other hand. This discussion leads the author to (...) the problem of visuality conceived as a set of visual representations, which in a historically given period are legitimately visible. This definition of visuality returns the representation and the unrepresentable back into the political conception of image. (shrink)

Em filosofia é comum o empenho em uma busca normativa, normatividade esta que aparece nos processos perceptivos quando o sujeito entra em relação com realidades de uma ordem de magnitude diferente da sua . Não acontece de outra maneira quando se trata de filosofar sobre a técnica – com efeito, em que ordem ou nível de magnitude em relação a nós ela – a técnica – se situa? Pensamos que a primeira condição para responder a tal pergunta é formulá-la em (...) termos políticos. A tese a ser desenvolvida neste trabalho, portanto, é a de que a percepção filosófica da técnica contemporânea, de um modo geral, está permeada pelo preconceito de que a técnica é algo destrutivo e que se encontra fora de controle, demandando uma filosofia moral-normativa capaz de impor-lhe os devidos limites: no entanto, não é preciso permanecer pensando assim; através da articulação entre o conceito estético-político de partilha do sensível , e os conceitos de individuação psíquica e individuação coletiva e psicopoder , pretende-se demonstrar, não a ineficácia de uma filosofia moral-normativa, mas a necessidade anterior de uma compreensão política da questão da técnica, para que, assim, tal problema possa ser recolocado de forma mais adequada em uma constelação teórica favorável à sua resolução. Tratar-se-á aqui de explicitar a relevância de uma maior sensibilização política dos sujeitos em seu processo de individuação para o caso de haver um real interesse em garantir os meios materiais de manutenção da vida no planeta. (shrink)

Publicado originalmente em 2017, As margens da ficção reúne textos criteriosamente selecionados e ordenados a dar ao livro uma unidade sólida construída em torno de um projeto central, ampliar o projeto iniciado por Jacques Rancière em A palavra muda. Ensaio sobre as contradições da literatura (1998) e A política da literatura (2007), de uma poética da ficção moderna. Como tal, constitui uma possível introdução ao conjunto maior da vertente estética de sua obra. A noção de poética é tomada de (...) empréstimo da Poética de Aristóteles, na qual expõe a teoria das normas de composição do poema como ficção narrativa. Se a poética aristotélica forma “a matriz estável da racionalidade ficcional clássica no Ocidente” (RANCIÈRE, 2021, p. 8), a de Rancière pretende, por sua vez, dar conta das transformações que afetaram essa matriz no romance moderno e nas ciências humanas e sociais do século XIX. À vista disso, se em obras como A partilha do sensível (2000) ou O inconsciente estético (2001), o autor propôs uma releitura do discurso filosófico da estética, sua constituição do regime estético da arte que desestabiliza uma distinção fundamental no Ocidente e na modernidade, ao estabelecer a superioridade da razão sobre as faculdades sensíveis, A política da literatura ou O fio perdido. Ensaios sobre a ficção moderna (2013), Rancière explora uma outra dimensão da estética, a que diz respeito à ficção e às formas da narrativa. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene como objetivo revisar el concepto de emancipación en la obra de J. Rancière, particularmente como aparece desarrollado en El maestro ignorante y El espectador emancipado. De esta forma, se muestra que la emancipación no es el fin de un proyecto histórico sino un punto de partida a través de la igualdad de las inteligencias, y por lo tanto, cualquiera puede tener acceso a esta experiencia sin un proceso de concientización o un maestro explicador. Por último, reflexionamos (...) sobre los posibles retos y posibilidades del método de la igualdad. (shrink)

Se afirma que la subjetivación política no puede pensarse al margen de las manifes-taciones éticas, artísticas y espirituales de la política, en cuanto que despliegan de distintas maneras unos efectos sobre lo que es asumido como común, y reconfiguran nuevas formas de concebir el sujeto político en caminos inusuales de la subjetivación. Se problematiza la subjetivación política a partir de tres lecturas: la crítica, con base en los planteamientos de Michel Foucault; una cierta interpretación de las prácticas artísticas, en Jacques (...) Rancière; y una concepción de la espiritualidad y la política a la luz de los planteamientos de Simone Weil. (shrink)

Este escrito se propone exponer, desarrollar y fundamentar, a grandes rasgos, un cuestionamiento interpretativo sobre la vinculación entre J. Rancière y L. Althusser, específicamente en torno a la concepción de policía del primero y de aparato de Estado del segundo. Es conocido que, en una primera etapa, Rancière fue cercano al pensamiento de Althusser, pero nunca un adherente del mismo. No obstante, en su pensamiento político se pueden hallar residuos y vestigios que parecieran dar cuenta de aquella primera (...) relación intelectual que se trazó como un cruzamiento entre ambos autores. Teniendo esto en mente, se vuelve menos descabellado el plantear lo siguiente como eje de este texto: que la caracterización de lo policiaco o de la policía, tal como está en algunos textos de Rancière, tiende a insinuar un cierto símil con la noción de aparato de Estado, propia del marxismo althusseriano, en tanto que se considera a este último en su duplicidad o doble faceta: aparato represivo de Estado y aparatos ideológicos de Estado. ¿Es plausible una lectura interpretativa que se maneje en esta clave, siguiendo esta intuición pese a todas las objeciones que se alzan a la brevedad? En la presente indagación se intentará dar respuesta a esta interrogante. (shrink)

La force créatrice du discours que décrit Taylor permet-elle aux subordonnés de parler en leur nom propre? Pour répondre à cette question, j’emprunte au concept de politique de Jacques Rancière. J’affirme que la distinction de Taylor entre HLC et HHH ressemble à celle qu’établit Rancière entre «politique» et «police». Toutefois, parce que la force créatrice du discours réitère l’ordre humain, elle n’est pas politique en elle-même. J’aborde l’exemple de la relation «avunculaire» présenté par de Taylor pour illustrer à (...) quel moment la force créatrice peut s’avérer, ou non, un fondement de la politique. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

Telling a patient that the outcome of his illness is not good, or even hopeless, requires sensitivity and the ability to communicate with him in the setting of a hospital which is an unnatural environment divorced from family and friends. It is a task which must be taught and learned by doctors and nurses.

Translator's introduction -- Preface -- Part I: The aesthetics of politics -- Ten theses on politics -- Does democracy mean something? -- Who is the subject of the rights of man? -- Communism : from actuality to inactuality -- The people or the multitudes -- Bio-politics or politics -- September 11 and afterwards : a rupture in the symbolic order -- Of war as the supreme form of advanced plutocratic consensus -- Part II: The politics of aesthetics -- The aesthetic (...) revolution and its outcomes -- The paradoxes of political art -- The politics of literature -- The monument and its confidences or Deleuze and Art's capacity for resistance -- The ethical turn of aesthetics and politics -- Part III: Response to critics -- The usage of distinctions. (shrink)

The existential analysis -- The death of dasein -- The timeliness of dasein -- The derivation of time -- The time of being.

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing (...) achievement. (shrink)

The received translation and interpretation of many of the technical terms current in the textile industry of the Roman Empire are inaccurate, because lexicographers have either fought shy of being precise, or have thought that they recognized in the ancient world technical processes which originated at a much later date. The evidence is often equivocal or insufficient, but may still yield details that have been overlooked. The textile expression scutulatus, to take an example, deserves more attention than Blümner has devoted (...) to it. When it refers to the appearance of a garment, Lewis and Short, s.v. scutulatus, translate ‘diamond or lozenge-shaped, checkered’. It seems worth while to attempt a more precise translation, and, if possible, to estimate the significance in context of the goods so designated. (shrink)

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, and not just out of thought, out of a partially functioning mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless and that time and the timeless each has its own unique value. The timeless, or real silence, that which alone can make for depth in one's living and (...) relating, can be there only when, in one's awareness, time and all that is related to time, have come to an end. An examination of a wide variety of statements made by writers, both past and present, shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past. 'Living beyond the One and the Many' invites readers to consider the possibility that what is presented in it can bring deep meaning to one's way of living in the world"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

Jeffrey Collins’ new book aims to presents Locke’s views on religious toleration in the light of Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy. At first blush, Hobbes seems an unusual choice as a point of co...