Jacques Rancière > Quotes

“Whoever teaches without emancipating stultifies.”
― Jacques Ranciere

“Critical art is an art that aims to produce a new perception of the world, and therefore to create a commitment to its transformation. This schema, very simple in appearance, is actually the conjunction of three processes: first, the production of a sensory form of 'strangeness'; second, the development of an awareness of the reason for that strangeness and third, a mobilization of individuals as a result of that awareness.”
― Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics

“Disagreement is not the conflict between one who says white and another who says black. It is the conflict between one who says white and another who also says white but does not understand the same thing by it.”
― Jacques Ranci

“Poetic language that knows itself as such doesn't contradict reason. On the contrary, it reminds each speaking subject not to take the narrative of his mind's adventures for the voice of truth. Every speaking subject is the poet of himself and of things. Perversion is produced when the poem is given as something other than a poem, when it wants to be imposed as truth, when it wants to force action.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“To explain something to someone is first of all to show him he cannot understand it by himself.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“Keeping a monopoly on legitimate violence is still the proven best way to limit violence and allow reason some asylum where it can be freely practiced.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“To teach what one doesn't know is simply to ask questions about what one doesn't know.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“The master always keeps a piece of learning--that is to say, a piece of the student's ignorance--up his sleeve. I understood that, says the satisfied student. You think so, corrects the master. in fact, there's a difficulty here that I've been sparing you until now. We will explain it when we get to the corresponding lesson. What does this mean? asks the curious student. I could tell you, responds the master, but it would be premature: you wouldn't understand at all. It will be explained to you next year. The master is always a length ahead of the student, who always feels that in order to go farther he must have another master, supplementary explications. Thus does the triumphant Achilles drag Hector's corpse, attached to his chariot, around the city of Troy.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“Il y a deux mensonges fondamentaux: celui qui proclame 'je dis la vérité' et celui qui affirme 'je ne peux pas dire.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“A material thing is first of all “the only bridge of communication between two minds.” The bridge is a passage, but it is also distance maintained. The materiality of the book keeps two minds at an equal distance, whereas explication is the annihilation of one mind by another.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“نتذكر تصريح وزير الدفاع الأمريكي بصدد عمليات النهب التي أعقبت سقوط صدام حسين. قال ما جوهره إننا منحنا الحرية للعراقيين. والحرية الآن هي، أيضاً، حرية فعل الشر.”
― جاك رانسيير, Hatred of Democracy

“It is easier to compare oneself, to establish social exchange as that swapmeet of glory and contempt where each person receives a superiority in exchange for the inferiority he confesses to.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“The government does not owe the people education for the simple reason that one does not owe the people what it can take for itself. And education is like liberty: it is not given, it is taken.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“Upravo to je književnost: umetnost pisanja koja ublažava raliku između sveta umetnosti i sveta običnog života tako što izjednačava sve teme.”
― Jacques Rancière, Politics of Literature

“Rhetoric is perverted poetry.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“The problem is to reveal an intelligence to itself. Anything can be used. Télémaque. Or a prayer or a song that the child or the ignorant one knows by heart. There is always something the ignorant one knows that can be used as a point of comparison, something to which a new thing to be learned can be related. The locksmith who opens his eyes wide when told he can read bears witness to this. He doesn’t even know the alphabet. Let him take the time to glance at the calendar. Doesn’t he know the order of the months and can’t he thus figure out January, February, March. He knows how to count a little. And what’s to prevent him from counting softly while following the lines in order to recognize in written form what he already knows? He knows he is called William and that his birthday is January 16th. He will soon know how to find the word. He knows that February has only twenty-eight days. He sees that one column is shorter than the others and he will recognize “28.” And so on. There is always something that the master can ask him to find, something about which he can question him and thus verify the work of his intelligence.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“Blanqui'de olduğu gibi Nietzsche'de de bilimsel savdan daha önemli olan, gözler önüne serilmeye çalışılan şeydir: tekrarın bağlamındaki yarılma. Tekrar teslimiyeti getirmez. Tersine ikiye bölünür ve bu bölünme her defasında bir tekrarın bir başkasının karşısına konmasını zorunlu kılar. Çünkü karşı taraftakiler, her defasında kendilerine benzer bir biçimde geri gelecek ve aynı durumları yeniden yaratacaktır: "Seni tüketen o adam ebediyen geri gelecek, küçük adam." Vasatlığın (Nietzsche) ya da baskının (Blanqui) ebedi geri dönüşü karşısında, zarların her yeniden ortaya çıkışında bir kere daha diriltici çarpışmadan yana kumar oynamak gerekir. Çünkü vasatlığa ya da baskıya karşı çıkabilecek olanlar sadece ve sadece aynı durumun yinelenip duracağını ve her defasında bütün yinelemeler için seçim yapıyor gibi davranmak gerektiğini bilen- yani bunu bir aksiyom olarak kabul eden kişilerdir.

Nietzsche ve Blanqui karşılaştırıldığında bu seçime en radikal koşulları bağlayan yine Blanqui'dir. Nietzsche tekrarı, ardışık dünyalarla sınırlarken Blanqui tekrarı eş-varoluşlu sonsuz sayıda dünyaya yayarak çoğalttığı için değil sadece. Blanqui aynı zamanda bu bilginin yeni bir insan ya da yeni bir tür insan-ötesi varlık oluşturabileceğini yadsır. Ancak her türden umudu yadsımaz. Durumların hep aynı kahramanlarla ebediyen tekrar sahnelenmesi meselelerin hep aynı olduğu ve ebediyen aynı kalacağı anlamına gelmez. İlerleme umudunun üstü çizilir. Geriye yolların çatallanması umudu kalır. Benzer her yol ağzında farklı bir yola sapılabilir. Milyarlarca başka Blanqui, deneyimlerinden dersler çıkarıyor demek değildir bu: "Birden çok ikizin daha tedbirli davranıp sağa ya da sola dönmeyi akıl etmiş ve kaderlerini beceriksizlerin kaderlerinden ayırmış olmasını umuyorum. Umuyorum ama kuşkuluyum. Böyle farklılaşmalar fizyoloji yasalarına çok ters düşer." Öyleyse, "ikizleri iki farklı yola sokacak" şey sadece tesadüfler olabilir… Tesadüflerin işini yapmasını durup beklemek gerektiği anlamına gelmez bu… Hiçbir iradi plan zarların atılmasına bel bağlama zorunluluğunu ortadan kaldırmaz. Ama buna karşılık akıllı ve cesur insanların, hiçbir şeyi tesadüfe bırakmadan, bütün ayrıntılarıyla ince ince hazırlayıp uygulamaya sokmadıkları bir ayaklanmayı da tesadüfler asla zafere ulaştırmaz. Tesadüfe bırakılacak tek şey, onun özüne denk düşen şeydir: bahtı açık bir çatallanma. (Önsöz, Yıldızlardan Ebediyete-Blanqui)”
― Jacques Rancière

“Béla Tarr insists: if montage, as a distinct activity, has so little importance in his films, this is because it takes place in the heart of the sequence, which never ceases to vary in its own interior: in a single shot, the camera passes from a close-up of a stove or a fan to the complexity of the interactions for which a bistro serves as theater; it climbs from a hand toward a face before leaving the latter to enlarge the frame, or to explore other faces; it passes through zones of darkness before illuminating other bodies, now caught on a different level. In this manner it establishes an infinity of miniscule variations between movement and immobility: tracking shots that advance very slowly toward a face, or initially unperceived halts in the movement.”
― Jacques Rancière, Béla Tarr, the Time After

“Ainsi le raisonnement avance-t-il droit sur ses deux pieds boiteux”
― Jacques Rancière, Le philosophe et ses pauvres (Nouvelle édition)

“Le réel doit être fictionné pour être pensé.”
― Jacques Rancière, La partizione del sensibile. Estetica e politica

“Le partage du sensible fait voir qui peut avoir part au commun en fonction de ce qu’il fait, du temps et de l’espace dans lesquels cette activité s’exerce. Avoir telle ou telle « occu­pation » définit ainsi des compétences ou
des incompétences au commun. Cela défi­nit le fait d’être ou non visible dans un espace commun, doué d’une parole com­mune, etc. Il y a donc, à la base de la poli­tique, une « esthétique » qui n’a rien à voir avec cette « esthétisation de la politique », propre à l’« âge des masses », dont parle Benjamin.”
― Jacques Rancière, Distributions of the Sensible: Rancière, between Aesthetics and Politics

“La inteligencia... es potencia de hacerse comprender que pasa por la verificación del otro. Y solo el igual comprende al igual." Esto, dice el autor es lo que "hace que una sociedad sea posible en general”
― Jacques Rancière, El maestro ignorante: Cinco lecciones sobre la emancipación intelectual - Nueva edición ampliada

“This something, I believe, is simply the presupposition that theatre is in and of itself communitarian. This presupposition continues to precede theatrical performances and anticipate its effects. But in a theatre, in front of a performance, just as in a museum, school or street, there are only ever individuals plotting their own paths in the forest of things, acts and signs that confront or surround them. The collective power shared by spectators does not stem from the fact that they are members of a collective body or from some specific form of interactivity. It is the power each of them has to translate what she perceives in her own way, to link it to the unique intellectual adventure that makes her similar to all the rest in as much as this adventure is not like any other. This shared power of the equality of intelligence links individuals, makes them exchange their intellectual adventures, in so far as it keeps them separate from one another, equally capable of using the power everyone has to plot her own path. What our performances — be they teaching or playing, speaking, writing, making art or looking at it — verify is not our participation in a power embodied in the community. It is the capacity of anonymous people, the capacity that makes everyone equal to everyone else. This capacity is exercised through irreducible distances; it is exercised by an unpredictable interplay of associations and dissociations.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator

“A style, as we know after Flaubert, is not the embellishment of a discourse, but a manner of seeing things: an “absolute” manner, says the novelist, a manner of absolutizing the act of seeing and the transcription of perception, against the narrative tradition that rushes on to the effect that follows from a cause. For the writer, however, “to see” is an ambiguous word. It is necessary “to make the scene visible,” says the novelist. But what he writes is not what he sees, and it is this very gap that brings literature into being. The situation is different with the filmmaker: what he sees, what is in front of the camera, is also what the spectator will see. For the filmmaker, though, there is also a choice between two ways of seeing: the relative, which instrumentalizes the visible in the service of the succession of actions, and the absolute, which gives the visible the time to produce its specific effect.”
― Jacques Rancière, Béla Tarr, the Time After

“For me, this was not a question of opposing voices from below to discourse from above, but of reflecting on the relation of division of discourses and division of conditions, of grasping the interplay of borders and transgressions according to which the effects of speech that seize human bodies becomes ordered or disturbed" p.227.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Philosopher and His Poor

“Hırslılar, kendilerini kimseden aşağı saymamakla kazandıkları zihinsel gücü, kendilerini başka herkesten üstün saymakla kaybederler”
― Jacques Rancière

“On suppose que l'art nous rend révoltés en nous montrant des choses révoltantes, qu'il nous mobilise par le fait de se mouvoir hors de l'atelier ou du musée et qu'il nous transforme en opposants au système dominant en se niant lui- même comme élément de ce système.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator

“The performance of the actors falls within the province of this same “realism.” They are neither traditional actors, nor individuals living their own story on the screen. It hardly matters, however, if they are career actors like János Derszi, the young man of Almanac of Fall who became the old man of The Turin Horse, or amateurs like Erika Bok, little Estike of Satantango who became the daughter of the old coach driver. They are, in the first place, “personalities,” says Béla Tarr. They have to be the characters, not play them. We must not allow ourselves to be tricked by the apparent banality of the prescription. Their task is not that of identifying themselves with fictional characters. No realism in their words, which punctuate a situation without intending to translate the particularity of the characters. But no need to adopt a “neutral” tone, à la Bresson, either, in order to make the hidden truth of their being appear. Their words are already detached from their bodies, they are an emanation of the fog, of repetition, and of expectation. They circulate throughout the place, are dispersed in its air, or they affect the other bodies in it and arouse new movements. The realism is in the manner of inhabiting situations. Amateurs or professionals, what counts for actors is their capacity to perceive situations and to invent responses, a capacity formed not by classes on the dramatic arts, but by their experience of life, or by an artistic practice forged elsewhere.”
― Jacques Rancière, Béla Tarr, the Time After

“La première question politique est de savoir quels objets et quels sujets sont concernés par ces institutions et ces lois, quelles formes de relations définissent proprement une communauté politique, quels objets ces relations concernent, quels sujets sont aptes à désigner ces objets et à en discuter. La politique est l'activité qui reconfigure les cadres sensibles au sein desquels se définissent des objets communs”
― Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator

“La pensée ne se transmet pas à l'action. C'est une pensée qui se transmet à une pensée et une action qui en provoque une autre. La pensée agit pour autant qu'elle accepte de ne pas très bien savoir ce qui la pousse elle-même et renonce à garder la maîtrise de ses effets”
― Jacques Rancière, Chronicles of Consensual Times