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Proletarian Nights: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century France
Proletarian Nights , previously published in English as Nights of Labor and one of Rancière’s most important works, dramatically reinterprets the Revolution of 1830, contending that workers were not rebelling against specific hardships and conditions but against the unyielding predetermination of their lives. Through a study of worker-run newspapers, letters, journals, and worker-poetry, Rancière reveals the contradictory and conflicting stories that challenge the coherence of these statements celebrating labor.
This updated edition includes a new preface by the author, revisiting the work twenty years since its first publication in France.
This updated edition includes a new preface by the author, revisiting the work twenty years since its first publication in France.
478 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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927 people want to read
About the author
Jacques Rancière
205 books486 followersJacques Rancière (born Algiers, 1940) is a French philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris (St. Denis) who came to prominence when he co-authored Reading Capital (1968), with the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser.
Rancière contributed to the influential volume Reading "Capital" (though his contribution is not contained in the partial English translation) before publicly breaking with Althusser over his attitude toward the May 1968 student uprising in Paris.
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. What is ideology? What is the proletariat? Is there a working class? And how do these masses of workers that thinkers like Althusser referred to continuously enter into a relationship with knowledge? We talk about them but what do we know? 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.
Most 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.
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 Freize Art Fair. Former French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has cited Rancière as her favourite philosopher.
Rancière contributed to the influential volume Reading "Capital" (though his contribution is not contained in the partial English translation) before publicly breaking with Althusser over his attitude toward the May 1968 student uprising in Paris.
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. What is ideology? What is the proletariat? Is there a working class? And how do these masses of workers that thinkers like Althusser referred to continuously enter into a relationship with knowledge? We talk about them but what do we know? 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.
Most 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.
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 Freize Art Fair. Former French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has cited Rancière as her favourite philosopher.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 23, 2013
Proletarian Nights is a book made up of a series of paraphrasing, quotations and summaries of worker writings to make up a history from below. There are coherent thematic blocks but they are not strictly contained within the chapters. Themes are woven through studies of three experiments in worker association in or out of mid C19th France. The 'religion' of Saint Simonianism segues into a consideration of the phenomena of Worker Associations after 1848 and then we read on to a final chapter on the Utopian Communist experiment of Etienne Cabet's Icarian communities in The New World.
The complexities of creating a historical account of such collectivities are expressed with a mass of detail and digressions into many sub-topics, that probably suggested themselves from the archival record, as well as discourses current when the book was being researched. A broad knowledge of French history is assumed but not essential and a timeline is provided at the end for those who might be getting lost. As much as possible it is the worker voices that are heard, or rather quoted in line with JRs thesis on equality of intelligence. This bass line giving respect to proletarian thinking is played throughout the book. A desire for intellectual emancipation is voiced by many of the worker writers he studies. See: The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (1981) for his full exposition of this idea.
Other major books of theory challenging Marxist orthodoxy came out at this point (e.g. Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction in 1979 and Jurgen Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action Vols 1 & 2 in 1981). Also Foucault (1976) idea's of bio power had followed his own pro worker activism after which he demanded that intellectuals let workers speak for themselves.
Proletarian Nights attempts to apply the idea of equality of intelligence to a period of time at which the germination of 'modern' capitalism and the concurrent foundation of a proletarian consciousness was underway. A British account would probably focus on the national federation of Chartists. Proletarian defined here is a worker in the context of a modern city.
Ranciere uses the case studies of these three forms of worker association to explore the class dynamics of oppression with regard to interwoven subjects of work, relation to the middle and upper classes, intellect of the worker, and to a lesser degree gender.
The book tracks archival evidence of the emergence of ideas of socialism within the minds of French artisans. He gives working people agency in giving form to the desire for a new world and the steps needed to get there. His account is nuanced toward their own desire to spend time being artists and writers as much as it is simply to escape base exploitation and poverty. Some of the early discussion is directed against work altogether. This discourse seems to be subsummed by later developments where socialist cadres become 'complicit in the dominant order'.
He talks about bourgeois allies and how working class people can spot 'em. The Saint Simonians impress by proposing to ban inheritance and give up their own immediately. They also call for the emancipation of women. He writes 'It became apparent that workers had never needed the secrets of domination explained to them, as their problem was quite a different one.' He talks about how important the gains in leisure-time were.
The writings he examined provides us with counter-myths to the images and stereotypes that oppression beats into people and that mainstream histories omit. The book did not make the impact that the author had hoped for: in the new preface for the 2011 edition he says: "Equality of intelligences remains the most untimely of thoughts it is possible to nourish about the social order."p.xxi
His surprising conclusion seems to be that: "The essential force behind progress: social love" p.424
He gives an elder woman, 'Jeanne Desiree' leading woman in second international, the last word:
"Everyone in the world is at work on it, whether they know it or not, and for those who see these things from on high, the evolution is marvelous." quoted by JR p.427/8
Its a long and often difficult slog for a slow reader like me. But still I regard it as useful reading for any working class intellectual or their allies.
For a longer breakdown and discussion of each section see my blog on:
http://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.co.u...
The complexities of creating a historical account of such collectivities are expressed with a mass of detail and digressions into many sub-topics, that probably suggested themselves from the archival record, as well as discourses current when the book was being researched. A broad knowledge of French history is assumed but not essential and a timeline is provided at the end for those who might be getting lost. As much as possible it is the worker voices that are heard, or rather quoted in line with JRs thesis on equality of intelligence. This bass line giving respect to proletarian thinking is played throughout the book. A desire for intellectual emancipation is voiced by many of the worker writers he studies. See: The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (1981) for his full exposition of this idea.
Other major books of theory challenging Marxist orthodoxy came out at this point (e.g. Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction in 1979 and Jurgen Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action Vols 1 & 2 in 1981). Also Foucault (1976) idea's of bio power had followed his own pro worker activism after which he demanded that intellectuals let workers speak for themselves.
Proletarian Nights attempts to apply the idea of equality of intelligence to a period of time at which the germination of 'modern' capitalism and the concurrent foundation of a proletarian consciousness was underway. A British account would probably focus on the national federation of Chartists. Proletarian defined here is a worker in the context of a modern city.
Ranciere uses the case studies of these three forms of worker association to explore the class dynamics of oppression with regard to interwoven subjects of work, relation to the middle and upper classes, intellect of the worker, and to a lesser degree gender.
The book tracks archival evidence of the emergence of ideas of socialism within the minds of French artisans. He gives working people agency in giving form to the desire for a new world and the steps needed to get there. His account is nuanced toward their own desire to spend time being artists and writers as much as it is simply to escape base exploitation and poverty. Some of the early discussion is directed against work altogether. This discourse seems to be subsummed by later developments where socialist cadres become 'complicit in the dominant order'.
He talks about bourgeois allies and how working class people can spot 'em. The Saint Simonians impress by proposing to ban inheritance and give up their own immediately. They also call for the emancipation of women. He writes 'It became apparent that workers had never needed the secrets of domination explained to them, as their problem was quite a different one.' He talks about how important the gains in leisure-time were.
The writings he examined provides us with counter-myths to the images and stereotypes that oppression beats into people and that mainstream histories omit. The book did not make the impact that the author had hoped for: in the new preface for the 2011 edition he says: "Equality of intelligences remains the most untimely of thoughts it is possible to nourish about the social order."p.xxi
His surprising conclusion seems to be that: "The essential force behind progress: social love" p.424
He gives an elder woman, 'Jeanne Desiree' leading woman in second international, the last word:
"Everyone in the world is at work on it, whether they know it or not, and for those who see these things from on high, the evolution is marvelous." quoted by JR p.427/8
Its a long and often difficult slog for a slow reader like me. But still I regard it as useful reading for any working class intellectual or their allies.
For a longer breakdown and discussion of each section see my blog on:
http://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.co.u...
March 9, 2024
Cela faisait plusieurs mois (années ?) que ce livre me tentait, et j'ai enfin pris le temps de lire "La nuit des prolétaires, archives du rêve ouvrier" de Jacques Rancière, dans lequel il raconte et étudie la littérature ouvrière du XIXe siècle, entre désir d'émancipation et recherche esthétique, ainsi que les expériences saint-simoniennes, fouriéristes, associatives, et icariennes.
La prose de Jacques Rancière est jolie mais pas toujours très abordable, il faut s'accrocher pour suivre son propos et j'ai parfois eu du mal à rester concentré. Les chapitres sont longs, Jacques Rancière ne prend pas toujours la peine d'expliciter le contexte et les idées présentées. C'est ce qui me donne un sentiment mitigé en refermant ce livre : j'ai l'impression d'être passé à côté de beaucoup d'éléments, sans doute passionnants, dans ce long texte parfois à la limite de l'occulte pour le non-inité que je suis.
La prose de Jacques Rancière est jolie mais pas toujours très abordable, il faut s'accrocher pour suivre son propos et j'ai parfois eu du mal à rester concentré. Les chapitres sont longs, Jacques Rancière ne prend pas toujours la peine d'expliciter le contexte et les idées présentées. C'est ce qui me donne un sentiment mitigé en refermant ce livre : j'ai l'impression d'être passé à côté de beaucoup d'éléments, sans doute passionnants, dans ce long texte parfois à la limite de l'occulte pour le non-inité que je suis.
November 29, 2023
چی بگم نمیدونم ولی جونم دراومد تا تموم بشه.
February 8, 2013
An excellent example of labor history that manages to capture the experiences, ideas and dreams of working people. Some might be turned off by a structure that meanders down paths that do not seem to have conclusions, but maybe we should all be so bold as to follow thoughts that lack a definitive narrative.
July 25, 2025
altough i like the general aim of the project. it was at times very tough to read. Very dense in philosphical and literary cross-references.
the counter-archive is the leftist best friend, that is for sure.
the counter-archive is the leftist best friend, that is for sure.
October 27, 2007
It is rare that I get excited reading the work of history, but this is.
November 23, 2025
Other leftist intellectuals diagnose working-class people. They have afflictions, maladies, misunderstandings. In short, they must be corrected—if not by the guidance of the enlightened, then through the inevitability of historical materialism.
Rancière thinks with them. Because when the joiner Gauny writes poetry in his diary, when he imagines a Biblical escape to a Promised Land, when he ironically juxtaposes the art of the aristocracy with the posters of the workers, he is not being frivolous. He is producing political thought aesthetically. He is, in equal parts, prosaic and poetic, didactic and unscholarly, severe and irreverent. And he has just as much to say—if not more—than Althusser, Balibar, Foucault, or even Rancière himself.
Political equality begins not in theories about the masses but in their nightly meanderings. So why don't you listen to him?
Rancière thinks with them. Because when the joiner Gauny writes poetry in his diary, when he imagines a Biblical escape to a Promised Land, when he ironically juxtaposes the art of the aristocracy with the posters of the workers, he is not being frivolous. He is producing political thought aesthetically. He is, in equal parts, prosaic and poetic, didactic and unscholarly, severe and irreverent. And he has just as much to say—if not more—than Althusser, Balibar, Foucault, or even Rancière himself.
Political equality begins not in theories about the masses but in their nightly meanderings. So why don't you listen to him?
June 5, 2017
Largo y complicado. Un poco más de lo necesario. Sin embargo, retrato interesante del movimiento saintsimoniano, el fourierismo y toda la radicalidad previa a 1848. Paralelo en esentido a la Historia de las utopías de Lewis Mumford y la Formación histórica de la clase trabajadora en Inglaterra de E.P. Thompson.
July 30, 2024
painfully dense translation, i contemplated putting this down nearly every single time just because how dated and rigid the prose was... However, this is perhaps one of the most personally influential books I've ever read and I think about it on a weekly basis.
September 14, 2018
Una movida muy tocha para dicir que Althusser era un pouco dógmatico e tonto.
August 25, 2015
Excelente writing but the theme is just not that interesting
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews