Jacques Rancière

Jacques Rancière
Born 1940
Algiers, French Algeria
Alma mater École Normale Supérieure
Era 20th-/21st-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Continental philosophy
Structural Marxism
Institutions University of Paris VIII
Main interests
 Political philosophy, aesthetics
Notable ideas
 Theories of democracy, disagreement, visual aesthetics, "part of no part"

Jacques Rancière (French: [ʁɑ̃sjɛʁ]; born 1940) is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis who came to prominence when he co-authored Reading Capital (1968), with the structuralist Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser.[1]

Life and work

Rancière contributed to the influential volume Reading Capital before publicly breaking with Althusser over his attitude toward the May 1968 student uprising in Paris; Rancière felt Althusser's theoretical stance did not leave enough room for spontaneous popular uprising.[2]

Since then, Rancière has departed from the path set by his teacher and published a series of works probing the concepts that make up our understanding of political discourse, such as ideology and proletariat. He sought to address whether the working class in fact exists, and how the masses of workers that thinkers like Althusser referred to continuously enter into a relationship with knowledge, particularly the limits of philosophers' knowledge with respect to the proletariat. An example of this line of thinking is Rancière's book entitled Le philosophe et ses pauvres (The Philosopher and His Poor, 1983), a book about the role of the poor in the intellectual lives of philosophers.

More recently Rancière has written on the topic of human rights and specifically the role of international human rights organizations in asserting the authority to determine which groups of people, again the problem of masses, justify human rights interventions and even war.

Rancière's book, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (original title Le Maître ignorant: Cinq leçons sur l'émancipation intellectuelle, published in 1987) was written for educators and educators-to-be. Through the story of Joseph Jacotot, Rancière challenges his readers to consider equality as a starting point rather than a destination. In doing so, he asks educators to abandon the themes and rhetoric of cultural deficiency and salvation. Rather than requiring informed schoolmasters to guide students towards prescribed and alienating ends, Rancière argues that educators can channel the equal intelligence in all to facilitate their intellectual growth in virtually unlimited directions. The schoolmaster need not know anything (and may be ignorant). Rancière begins with the premises that all are of equal intelligence and that any collective educational exercise founded on this principle can provide the insights from which knowledge is constructed. He claims that the poor and disenfranchised should feel perfectly able to teach themselves whatever it is they want to know. Furthermore, anyone can lead, and the oppressed should not feel bound to experts or reliant on others for their intellectual emancipation.

Jacotot advocated the 'equality of intelligence' and claimed that an ignorant person could teach another ignorant person. Rancière developed this idea in The Ignorant Schoolmaster, saying that “there is stultification whenever one intelligence is subordinated to another ... whoever teaches without emancipating stultifies”.[3][4]

Influence

In 2006, it was reported that Rancière's aesthetic theory had become a point of reference in the visual arts, and Rancière has lectured at such art world events as the Frieze Art Fair.[2] Former French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal described Rancière as her favourite philosopher.[5]

Selected bibliography

Rancière's work in English translation
  • Reading Capital (1968) (With Louis Althusser, Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey and Étienne Balibar - in the French original edition)
  • “Reply to Levy”. Telos 33 (Fall 1977). New York: Telos Press.
  • The Nights of Labor: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century France (1989) ISBN 0-87722-833-7.
  • Nights of Labor
  • The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (1987, tr. 1991) - ISBN 0-8047-1969-1.
  • The Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge (1994) - This is a brief book, arguing for an epistemological critique of the methods and goals of the traditional study of history. It has been influential in the philosophy of history
  • On the Shores of Politics (1995): ISBN 0-86091-637-5
  • Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (1998) ISBN 0-8166-2844-0.
  • Short Voyages to the Land of the People (2003): ISBN 0-8047-3682-0
  • The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, ed. and transl. by Gabriel Rockhill (2004): ISBN 978-0-8264-8954-8
  • The Philosopher and His Poor, ed. Andrew Parker, co-trans. John Drury, Corinne Oster, and Andrew Parker (2004): ISBN 978-0-8223-3274-9
  • The Future of the Image (2007): ISBN 1-84467-107-0
  • Hatred of Democracy (2007): ISBN 978-1-84467-098-7
  • The Aesthetic Unconscious (2009), transl., Debra Keates & James Swenson: ISBN 978-0-7456-4644-2
  • The Emancipated Spectator (2010): ISBN 978-1-84467-343-8
  • Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (2010): ISBN 978-1-84706-445-5
  • Chronicles of Consensual Times (2010), tr. by Steven Corcoran: ISBN 978-0-8264-4288-8
  • The Politics of Literature (2011), tr. by Julie Rose: ISBN 978-0-7456-4531-5
  • Staging the People: The Proletarian and His Double (2011), tr. by David Fernbach: ISBN 978-1-84467-697-2
  • Althusser's Lesson (2011) - The first English translation of Rancière’s first book, in which he explores and begins to move beyond the thought of his mentor, Louis Althusser (tr. by Emiliano Battista) ISBN 978-1-4411-0805-0
  • Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics (2011), tr. by James Swenson: ISBN 978-0-231-15103-0
  • Mallarmé: The Politics of the Siren (2011), tr. by Steven Corcoran: ISBN 978-0-8264-3840-9
  • Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art (2013), tr. by Zakir Paul: ISBN 978-1-78168-089-6
  • Bela Tarr, the Time After (2013), tr. by Erik Beranek: ISBN 978-1937561154
  • Modern Times (2017) : ISBN 978-953-7372-31-6 - 4 essays on temporality in art and politics, originally written in English
  • A coffee with Jacques Rancière beneath the Acropolis (2018) Babylonia Journal
Selected articles in English
  • "Ten Theses on Politics Theory & Event 2001
  • "Who Is the Subject of the Rights of Man?" The South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 103, Number 2/3, Spring/Summer 2004, pp. 297–310
  • "Is there a Deleuzian Aesthetics?" Tr. Radmila Djordjevic, Qui Parle?, Volume 14, Number 2, 2004, pp. 1–14
Further reading
  • The Lessons of Rancière. Samuel A. Chambers. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
  • Jacques Rancière: An Introduction, by Joseph Tanke. (New York & London: Continuum, 2011).
  • Jacques Rancière: Politics, History, Aesthetics. Eds. Phil Watts and Gabriel Rockhill. (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2009). Also includes an afterword by Rancière: "The Method of Equality: An Answer to Some Questions".
  • Politica delle immagini. Su Jacques Rancière, ed. by Roberto De Gaetano (Cosenza: Pellegrini, 2011). Includes essays by Rancière.

Films

Video lectures

Interviews

References

  1. ↑ See: Jacques Rancière Faculty Profile Archived 2010-04-17 at the Wayback Machine. at European Graduate School
  2. 1 2 Ben Davis. Rancière, For Dummies. The Politics of Aesthetics. Book Review.
  3. ↑ Jacques Ranciere (1981). The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. pp. 13, 18.
  4. ↑ Molly Quinn. "Committing (to) Ignorance". Epistemologies of Ignorance in Education. pp. 31–52.
  5. ↑ Patrice Bollon; Mark K. Jensen (December 2006). "Translation: Jacques Rancière, the philosopher who inspires Ségolène Royal". United for Peace of Pierce County, WA. Paris Match. p. 34. Retrieved 9 December 2013. Scoop: we've found out where the Socialist candidate got her ideas! From this intellectual sensitive to political alienation. Jacques Rancière.
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