Jacques Rancière: History, Politics, Aesthetics

The French philosopher Jacques Ranci re has influenced disciplines from history and philosophy to political theory, literature, art history, and film studies. His research into nineteenth-century workers' archives, reflections on political equality, critique of the traditional division between intellectual and manual labor, and analysis of the place of literature, film, and art in modern society have all constituted major contributions to contemporary thought. In this collection, leading scholars in the fields of philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism engage Ranci re's work, illuminating its originality, breadth, and rigor, as well as its place in current debates. They also explore the relationships between Ranci re and the various authors and artists he has analyzed, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Flaubert, Rossellini, Auerbach, Bourdieu, and Deleuze.

The contributors to this collection do not simply elucidate Ranci re's project; they also critically respond to it from their own perspectives. They consider the theorist's engagement with the writing of history, with institutional and narrative constructions of time, and with the ways that individuals and communities can disturb or reconfigure what he has called the "distribution of the sensible." They examine his unique conception of politics as the disruption of the established distribution of bodies and roles in the social order, and they elucidate his novel account of the relationship between aesthetics and politics by exploring his astute analyses of literature and the visual arts. In the collection's final essay, Ranci re addresses some of the questions raised by the other contributors and returns to his early work to provide a retrospective account of the fundamental stakes of his project.

Contributors. Alain Badiou, tienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Yves Citton, Tom Conley, Solange Gu noun, Peter Hallward, Todd May, Eric M choulan, Giuseppina Mecchia, Jean-Luc Nancy, Andrew Parker, Jacques Ranci re, Gabriel Rockhill, Kristin Ross, James Swenson, Rajeshwari Vallury, Philip Watts

Author: Gabriel Rockhill
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 09/01/2009
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780822345060

About the Author

Garbiel Rockhill is an assistant professor of philosophy at Villanova University. He is edited and translated Jacques Rancière's The Politics of Aesthetics. Philip Watts is an associate professor of French at Columbia University. He is the author of Allegories of the Purge: How Literature Responded to the Postwar Trials of Writers and Intellectuals in France.

Philip Watts is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University. He is the author of Allegories of the Purge.