The Politics of Aesthetics

by Jacques Rancière, Gabriel Rockhill (Editor)

"The Politics of Aesthetics rethinks the relationship between art and politics outside of the models established by the Marxist tradition, the Frankfurt School, and the more recent contributions made by the post-structuralists. Reclaiming aesthetics from the narrow confines it is often reduced to, Jacques Ranciere reveals its intrinsic link to politics by analyzing what they both have in common: the delimitation of the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, the thinkable and the unthinkable, the possible and the impossible." Presented as a series of interlinked interviews, The Politics of Aesthetics provides the most comprehensive introduction to Ranciere's work to date. Ranging across the history of art and politics from the Greek polis to the aesthetic revolution of the modern age, it includes incisive analyses of the uses and abuses of the concept of modernity, the relationship between art and mechanical reproduction, the logic of facts and fiction in history, the positive contradiction at work in modern literature, and the notion of politicized art.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Politics, Theory, Nonfiction, France, Academic

145 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Jacques 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.

Reviews

[Walid]

read most of it in one go while i was severely drunk, and it made sense. i tried rereading most of it in one go while sober, and it didn't make sense.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Late twentieth century French philosophy is a very puzzling beast, particularly for non-Europeans. Anglophones often denounce it as fashionable nonsense on the one hand--and other Anglophones then complain that these denouncers just don't get it, which is true. In fact, this latter group argues, French philosophy is a wonderful attempt to revolutionize thought. And then the first group suggests that this latter group is simply following a trend that has no real content. This is also true.

Because, at least as I understand it, French philosophy is neither a fashion industry, nor a wonderful attempt to revolutionize thought. It is a response to an incredibly specific set of historical and intellectual circumstances, that are more or less unique to France:

i) The French Communist Party, which was both powerful (insofar as it had a lot of members) and powerless (it's possible that the party never stood up to anyone in the twentieth century, rolling over for anyone, whether the French government, the USSR, or capitalism itself). It was also intellectually moribund.

ii) 1968: most recent French philosophy is a response to May 1968 and the problems it raises for social thought. Most importantly, the key questions are not "What is true?" or "What is just?", as in the arid desert of analytic philosophy, but "How can there be a revolution?", "Why, given the state of the world, is there not a revolution?", and "What would a legitimate revolution look like?"

iii) Structuralism, which in the U.S. really was an intellectual fashion, but in France somehow became *the* dominant mode of thought. The problems with structuralism are fairly obvious, viz., it ignores historical change, and it ignores agency/contingency. So structuralism simply cannot answer the revolutionary questions listed above.

iv) French intellectual history also plays an important role. The odd anglo philosopher might pop his (always a man, since this is real, pointless, my-cock-is-bigger-than-yours territory) head up and make a big deal about the Death of God or something. And then nobody cares. But in France, serious thinkers are almost always deeply opposed to any possibility of the transcendent, because the French church has, historically, been ultra-reactionary, and the left has been anti-clericalist. (This leads, of course, to some people wondering if this is really the right approach, and so you get phenomenologists explicitly turning to religion). Also: Descartes, not Locke; that is, rationalism, not empiricism.

With that out of the way, I knew nothing about Ranciere before reading this little book, and now I feel little need to learn more about him. He fits very nicely into this history of French philosophy: he's reacting against Althusser (an arch-structuralist, and arch-communist), trying to explain what a 'real' revolution would look like, and to explain why there hasn't been one.

STRUCTURALISM: I'm tempted to say that his work is *just* a response to structuralism. As he puts it, "what I try to do really is to target certain topic that both create some kind of discourse of political impotence and, on the other hand, either generate an idea that art cannot do anything or what you have to do is reproduce this stereotypical criticism of the commodity and consumption," (78). This is in the context of garbage art that just reproduces commodification, which is a fair point. But it's obvious that Ranciere's understanding of Marx is entirely structuralist, which means he doesn't actually understand commodities. So his rejection of ideology-critique (see below) is a rejection of a bad form of ideology critique, and has nothing to do with better forms of it (i.e., Frankfurt school). I'm not sure he knows that, though.

REVOLUTION: A real revolution, on his understanding, will involve a change in what it is possible to sense and therefore understand. Where Kant puts forward an unchanging set of conditions for the possibility of knowledge, Ranciere suggests that the conditions change and can be changed; when they are changed, the kinds of knowledge possible will also change. This is very much like Badiou, except where Badiou feels the need to use set theoretical language to make his point, Ranciere feels the need to use the language of aesthetics to make his, while fudging the lines between politics and aesthetics: "Politics and art, like forms of knowledge, construct 'fictions', that is to say material rearrangements of signs and images, relationships between what is seen and what is said, between what is done and what can be done," (35).

THE LACK OF REVOLUTION: There hasn't been a real revolution because the dominant mode of politics doesn't allow for it. This comes out in Zizek's afterword, which somewhat confusingly doesn't come at the end of the book. Again, like Badiou, Ranciere likes to schematize things; here, he posits three kinds of politics, roughly, communitarian, liberal, and Marxist. All of them deny the possibility of a real revolution in various ways. Today, Zizek suggests (possibly describing Ranciere, it's impossible to tell, as is Zizek's wont) we live post-politics, which is even worse. So our first revolutionary act must be an assertion of the importance of politics once again.

Along the way, Ranciere makes some nice points: he describes how postmodernism quickly becomes nihilistic (24), and tries to move past the idea that artworks and 'real' life can be separated off easily. Instead, the work of art functions in material reality just as, say, an apple functions in material reality. See: Deleuze.

On the other hand, he takes the worst tendencies of French philosophy (and no, I do not mean the silly jargon-mongering) to absurd lengths. I've mentioned his rejection of ideology critique. There are plenty of reasons not to reject ideology critique entirely, including the fact that it seems fairly clear that people act against their own interests, that people don't vote for emancipatory parties, nor act emancipatorily, nor seem to have too much of a problem with massive oppression. Given all this, why would you want to get rid of ideology critique?

Because, Ranciere suggests, "where one searches for the hidden beneath the apparent, a position of mastery is established," (46). In other words, one should not set oneself up as having a better understanding of the world than the illiterate field worker in Kansas, because that would be undemocratic. The fact that the actually existing world *is* very much undemocratic--which is why there are illiterate field workers in Kansas--has no purchase here. The fairly glaring problem with Ranciere's argument (and those like it) is that just acting *as if* human beings were genuinely equal does nothing to promote the creation of actual equality. Or, as Propagandhi put it, "And yes, I recognize the irony: the system I oppose affords me the luxury of biting the hand that feeds. That's exactly why privileged fucks like me should feel obliged to whine and kick and scream, until everyone has everything they need." Which is very different from pretending that privilege has no effects on human behavior.

This is not democratic thought; it's the dei- and reification of democracy. Zizek notes something similar, though in a far friendlier way (71), when he points out that the options for French philosophy appear to be a rejection of politics, on the one hand, or a rejection of economics, on the other: either you can be a pure soul making only perfectly democratic claims, like Ranciere; or you can sell out and pay attention to poverty and commodification, on the other. This is a false dichotomy. Economic injustice makes it almost impossible for people to support revolution, because why would a Kansan field worker support a revolution? They won't see that they have anything to gain, and will see that they have almost nothing left to lose--but that almost nothing tends to be their family, and their life.

It's pretty petty after these objections, but I'm also heartily sick of French philosophers 'interpreting' French literature to make it revolutionary, when it is *SO BLEEDING OBVIOUSLY* not revolutionary. No, Jacques Ranciere, Balzac, Flaubert, Mallarme etc... are not revolutionaries. Yes, they are wonderful writers. That is the progressive aspect of their work: that it's really freaking good, even though everything in the world tries to force us to make things that are crappy for the sake of a dollar. But of course, that would be a sell out to the economic point of view.

If you care after all of that, know that this is a quick read, that Ranciere's writing is as horrific as you'd expect, as is that of the editors and translators; that putting Zizek at the end of all this horrific writing explains his popularity (because it's like putting a chapter from any moderately comprehensible novelist in the middle of a book by Kant), and that after the revolution nobody will print books in sans serif font. WHY? THE PAIN! THE PAIN!

[R. Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book isn't for me.

A little about myself: I was a philosophy major in college. I mostly studied ethics, metaphysics, logic, and some philosophy of law. I minored in political science. So while I don't have a history in art or art history, I've got a little bit of book learnin' when it comes to philosophy and politics. So no, this book isn't exactly right up my ally, but one would think I'd be equipped to handle a short treatise that "rethinks the relationship between art and politics." Nope!

The book is divided into four parts. Well, three really, but Appendix 1 is important enough to be noted here. Part 1 is a translation of "The Distribution of the Sensible," part 2 is an interview with the translator, part 3 is an afterword for Slavoj Zizek, and Appendix 1 is an excellent glossary of technical terms. Seriously, that sort of thing needs to be in every philosophy book. It's so good I almost added another star to the rating. But you know what? This was a tough read, and that Appendix was completely necessary. This was tough for someone who was trained to read such things. It must be damn near indecipherable for most anyone else.

I wouldn't mind it as much if I could find any valuable meaning in it. Again, I'm not equipped to handle even this much Ranciere, but this text seemed almost masturbatory. Hidden under what appears to be a deliberately obscure and convoluted writing is a "rethink" that doesn't appear to be any more than oversimplified reinvention of terminology. I didn't see a reformulation of the great transitions in the history of art, and certainly not from "from the Greek polis to the aesthetic revolution of the modern age." I saw a reworking of vocabulary.

This is giving me a headache to talk about. Don't read this book unless you are an art history student well versed in terms like "partition of the sensible" or "representative regime of art." Even if you're interested in philosophy. It's not worth the headache.

[Lucas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Existe uma dissonância incômoda que permeia do começo ao fim o livro “A partilha do sensível”. Ao avançar nas páginas, fica claro que Rancière quer pensar na emergência de uma sensibilidade estética mais democrática na atualidade. E, no entanto, suas referências para tratar da valorização da multidão de anônimos na história e na arte, são sempre a obra de grandes pensadores e artistas da “civilização ocidental”. Não percebe, portanto, que não adiciona um pingo de história social a suas análises. Nem que produz categorias que são tanto elitistas, quanto eurocêntricas.
É uma pena, pois a premissa da obra é interessante. Ranciére trata de justificar seu mergulho na temática estética afirmando que os atos estéticos são formas de configurar a experiência humana, que ensejam novos modos do sentir e induzem novas formas de subjetividade política. “Hoje em dia”, conclui, ”é no terreno estético que prossegue a batalha ontem centrada nas promessas da emancipação”.

De qualquer forma, “A partilha do sensível” é um livro pequeno, divido em breves capítulos, cada um abrindo com uma pergunta feita por editores de uma revista sobre arte e política para Rancière que, em resposta, elabora sobre a questão. O primeiro ponto da obra é, justamente, um pedido para esclarecimento sobre a expressão que dá nome ao livreto.

A noção de partilha de sensível, explica Rancière, tem por propósito destacar a dimensão comum do sensível: a experiência estética deriva de um sistema social que determina lugares, capacidades, modos de ser e fazer na sociedade. A partilha do sensível define o que é ou não visível no espaço comum. É, portanto, a base estética da política que, por sua vez, define o que se pode ver, o que se pode dizer sobre o que é visto e quem tem competência para ver e qualidade para dizer.

Nos termos tautológicos bem recorrente na escrita de autores franceses, as práticas estéticas são maneiras de fazer que intervém na distribuição geral das próprias maneiras de fazer e nas suas relações com maneiras de ser e formas de visibilidade. Um tipo de fazer artístico define a maneira pela qual as obras e performance fazem política, posto que traduz e elabora uma atribuição de posições de poder e de formas de visibilidade de uma comunidade. Um exemplo elucidativo trazido por Rancière trata de Flaubert. Por mais que esse literato fosse um aristocrata, sua obra é a democracia em forma de literatura, afinal, recusa atribuir uma mensagem unívoca aos romances, abdicando de quaisquer intenções pedagógicas. Parte, portanto, de uma igualdade entre membros, acreditando que um interprete aleatório não vá fazer um uso errado do romance. A comunidade aleatória de leitores é reconhecida como capaz de atribuir sentido ao texto. A forma da arte define a forma de repartição da experiência comum.

Não é tão simples quanto o exemplo faz parecer. Rancière reconhece que a forma de se entender o romance é histórica e não um resultado mecânico do suporte e interface da arte. Ou seja, não é apenas porque o romance é facilmente impresso e difundido que é democrata. Seu ponto é simplesmente que o sentido de comunidade dado pela arte está ligado também a forma que essa assume, ainda que não esteja condicionado por ela. De fato, critica Beijamim por fazer parecer que a tecnologia fez emergir novos temas artísticos quando, ao contrário, para que determinado modo de fazer técnico fosse qualificado como arte foi preciso antes que seu tema tenha sido considerado artístico.

A noção de partilha do sensível parece realmente uma moldura fecunda para se discutir estética, mas ao fim do capítulo ainda sobram muitas dúvidas sobre o conceito. A impressão que tive foi de que esse nem era o tema central da publicação. Em verdade, o objeto central de Rancière é aquele trabalhado no segundo capítulo.

O segundo capítulo do livro trata dos regimes de identificação da arte: 1) o regime ético (Platão) que avalia a arte por: a) seu teor de verdade, garantido pelo indivíduo autorizado à faze-la e b) seu propósito, devendo ter uma função pedagógica que reitera as posições sociais existentes tais quais pensadas pelos “melhores entre nós” (A República platônica); 2) regime poético-representativo (Aristóteles) que define condições pelas quais as imitações da realidade produzidas pelo fazer artístico podem ser reconhecidas como pertencentes a arte – cria hierarquia e divisão de gêneros artísticos, atribuindo a cada um determinado procedimento adequado para elaboração; 3) regime estético (séc XIX) identifica a arte como o pensamento estranho a si mesmo. O regime estético é a transformação que mais ocupa as considerações de Rancière.

O autor pretende usar a noção de regime estético para problematizar e quiçá substituir a noção de modernidade nas artes. Rancière entende que a ideia de modernidade na arte é usualmente associada tanto a ideia de uma arte que abandona um fim mimético e resgata a singularidade própria do seu meio – a revolução pictural –, quanto com a ideia de que a arte é uma ferramenta para construção de um futuro utópico. Em oposição a essas noções, o regime estético valoriza o indício extraído do cotidiano (ato-falho em Freud; mercadoria em Marx) como o rastro da verdade da sociedade. A arte passa a ser a observação no banal até descobrir nele uma fonte de estranhamento que gera uma suspensão, que causa o pensamento a estranhar a si mesmo. A lógica que orienta o estranhamento nubla a diferença entre a razão que organiza fatos e a razão que organiza ficções, junta história e ficção em um mesmo regime de verdade. História e ficção são ordenação de signos. No regime estético credita qualquer relato sobre a realidade como como emprego do potencial das testemunhas mudas (o indício, o banal) potencializado pelo discurso. O que não quer dizer “tudo é narrativa” no sentido de pregar uma irrealidade das coisas, mas que a razão das histórias anda junto com as capacidades de agir dos agentes históricos. Tudo é um rearranjo de signos, de relações entre o que se vê e o que se diz, entre o que se faz e o que se pode fazer. O aspecto democrático do regime estético provém dessa difusão da habilitação para narrar o mundo derivada dessa lógica que percebe tudo como ordenação de signos. E da experiência de estranhamento que abole a arte bem executada ou feita pelo capacitado, como nos regimes anteriores.

Como dito, para quem está focado no aspecto democrático da arte, é espantoso o quanto Rancière ignora fontes e teorias sociais da história. Os regimes de identificação da arte parecem um mapa, uma estrutura, uma divisão proposta por um intelectual fascinado não pela experiência que o povo teve da arte ao longo da história, mas apenas da experiência e definições dadas para arte por outros intelectuais. Rancière se mostra muito atento à emergência da multidão de anônimos nas produções acadêmicas, mas incapaz de tratar das lutas, das dissonâncias, das heresias perpetradas pelos subalternos e periféricos ao longo da história.

O autor não tenta explicar em nenhum momento como surgiu historicamente o regime estético de identificação das artes. O que retira do foco se foi uma construção ou concessão dos dominantes. Ignora uma dimensão material e social da emergência de ideias. Narra, sem perceber (ou pelo menos assumir), uma história de identificação da arte da elite europeia, sem sequer ponderar como era a sensibilidade artística fora Europa. Ao chegar no regime estético, é incapaz de associar a difusão de uma estética pelo mundo com o capitalismo a as políticas imperialistas de extensão planetária. Termina, pois, naturalizando concepções bastante localizadas em termos de classe, raça e origem.

[Assem A. Hendawi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this a very powerful introduction to a very powerful and influential thinker.
Not everything here is easy to chew especially that you follow a line of inquiry as endlessly ramified.
I will certainly visit this text again along with other ones by Ranciere.

[Isa Cantos (Crónicas de una Merodeadora) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Te odio, Estética. Te odio, parcial de mañana.

[Eric Steere · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short collection of lectures and interviews (with an "afterword" by Zizek) demonstrates Ranciere's horizontal analyses of combinations between systems of possibilities--art and politics are engaged in this "negative dialectic" (as would be charged by his critics) or dialogical process that is closely related to his break with Althusser and concepts of Marxist thought. The totality of the aesthetic experience both comes before and cannot be contained by reality or our forms of living. The closest agency I can discern that he relates to art is in not in the sublimation of reality, but rather, in its most instrumental, is the political portrayed through the fabric of life THROUGH the theatrical. Thus concurrent with other French philosophers who would seek to efface the sphere of the economy in Marxist critiques (such as by Mouffe or Badiou), Ranciere disrupts both mimetic and representational perspectives on art. For those objects of study in this collection, from poetry to cinema, a horizontal field-of-vision is established for the nuanced negotiation between opposites. Art in itself is not political he argues. However, aesthetics would seem to have its own politics in the sense that the real must be fictionalized in order to be thought. What is meant by the aesthetic he describes as being a "pure instance of suspension, a moment when form is experienced for itself". He thus frees art and the regime of the aesthetic from any form of hierarchical or genre-privileged explanations, defining art in the singular, and opposing it to mimetic or representative regimes.

[Valentina Salvatierra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rancière es fan de hacer distinciones conceptuales, por ejemplo entre el modernismo y el modernitarismo (pp. 29-30), y "revelar" supuestas contradicciones inherentes en conceptos como esos. Él mismo no parece estar muy preocupado de caer en contradicción, por ejemplo en decir que algo es "condición" y "efecto" de algo al mismo tiempo. Bueno, igual da igual porque son puros juegos conceptuales: "Esta literariedad es la condición al mismo tiempo que el efecto de la circulación de los enunciados literarios 'propiamente tales'." (50). Algunas de sus distinciones conceptuales me parecieron útiles y me hicieron sentido, otras no tanto. Pero nunca logré cachar bien qué significaba su concepto central del "reparto de lo sensible" que era supuestamente la gran forma de vincular estética y política. Me parece que finalmente lo único que hacen estos textos tan densamente teóricos y conceptuales es alejar aun más la teoría estética (si es que esto es un exponente de esa disciplina) de la política real, eficaz, con esperanza alguna de incidir en el mundo más allá de la academia.

[Moé · Rating 4 out of 5]

un poil incompréhensible, mais sinon intéressant

[Acontecimal]

bufas na goma

[Elegavic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buenísimo ❤️ "la revolución estética redistribuye el juego al volver solidarias dos cosas: la confusión de fronteras entre la razón de los hechos y la razón de las ficciones, y el nuevo modo de racionalidad de la ciencia histórica"

[Rafael de Campos]

"O homem é um animal político porque é um animal literário, que se deixa desviar de sua destinação pelo poder das palavras."

[Arthur Dal Ponte Santana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aquela coisa: filosofia francesa é complicada e parece se referir a alguns problemas muito característicos do povo francês. Ainda assim, esse livro foi interessante por me ajudar a esclarecer algumas leituras acerca do Schiller, prover algumas oposições interessantes a Benjamin e contrapor algumas teorias de arte que me são mais caras. No geral, a complicação com o texto surge mais pelo final da obra e pela dificuldade que eu tive de situar o Rancière dentro de alguma tradição (parece que ele flerta com o marxismo em certas horas, mas ainda parece vago). De certo modo, sinto a necessidade de debater esse texto com alguém que tenha mais familiaridade com a área, pra conseguir situar melhor o autor e também entender um pouco mais sobre as questões levantadas nesse texto.

Além disso, interessante observar o prólogo desse texto, onde Rancière exibe que o mote do mesmo é tentar delimitar um debate específico dentro da intersecção entre a estética e a política. Esse tipo de atividade de delimitação já me foi dita como aspecto exclusivo da filosofia analítica, mas pelo visto não o é (rsrs).

[Andrew]

Rancière's thought seems to be a particularly ugly and rigid sort of absolutism. As soon as you establish a hierarchy of any kind, even to the extent of "the person studying" and "the object being studied," you are committing a fundamentally undemocratic act, which shuts down most any sites of resistance to speak of. I get it, he was reacting against Althusser, who had some shitty ideas, but Rancière's system of thought is, in its own way, equally suffocating.

So while politically I'm not on board, the aesthetic theories are at least interesting, and I found myself like, actually interested in his interpretations of Flaubert and German expressionism. I'd have to read more to form a stronger opinion, but my curiosity is piqued.

[Atonator187 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will take Nancy over Ranciere any day. R is drier and less evocative. Also, this book deals with art and aesthetics only tangentially and doesn't take it on in any sustained way. Seems like a proxy to talk about politics and Foucauldian epistemes w/out Foucault. That said, R seems like a must read for continental discussions.

[Alejandro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Partly a total reconfiguration of society's gaze, mainly a total disfiguration of my sight.

[Guilherme Soares Zanella · Rating 5 out of 5]

A ficção é o centro do entendimento do mundo. No lugar de uma simples mentira, é o encademento que dá sentido à mera distribuição de eventos. E, por isso, talvez o contador de histórias viva mesmo uma vida dupla. Um traidor do sistema, que subtrai as ações do campo privado do trabalho e ocupações, as lançando para a esfera pública, onde todos, independente do papel social, estão horizontalmente expostos aos mesmos signos.

Difícil pensar e refletir com profundidade uma obra que, por si só, é muito profunda. Me interesso cada vez mais com a relação entre a estética e a política, revisitando as experiências modernistas e pos-modernistas.

[Milo Galiano · Rating 3 out of 5]

No creo que sea mal libro, igualmente es insuficiente. Es el primer libro de Rancière que leo entero, aunque lleve mucho tiempo leyendo extractos y artículos. Pareciera que es una entrevista con las respuestas más largas, que nadie pedía. Las respuestas, a su vez, suenan a los cursos de historia de la estética, resumidos antes de entrar a un examen. A excepción del primer y el último capítulo, el resto son interesantes, pero no imprescindibles de leer aquí.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

55 excelentes páginas de teoría. El capítulo 1 y 2 son el fuerte del libro, súper interesante la forma en que diferencia los tres regímenes del arte (ético de la imágen, poético de la representación y estético). Por aquí, trabajando en categorizar el régimen estético.

[daria krol · Rating 2 out of 5]

no

[Errol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wordy but cover some important ground on the links between history, politics and fiction.

[thaís bambozzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pequenininho, mas ordinário. Rancière é tudo aquilo que as pessoas falam sim. E de agora em diante todo olhar remete a uma democrática partilha do sensível, pelo menos para mim.

“O estado estético é pura suspensão, momento em que a forma é experimentada por si mesma. O momento de formação de uma humanidade específica.”

[Ethan Greene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling Social Theory provides a framework for modern analysis of "politics." True Politics and Community is only an event that occurs when there is equality expressed in Dissensus. Consensus is the opposite of politics; "police" are the measures, institutions, etc. taken or formed to promote consensus and create a uniform "distribution of the sensible." True democracy (and politics) derives power from the lack of any qualifications to that power - thereby securing equality and dissensus.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basically, Ranciere blames Romanticism for materialism and divorced art from work when it is Marxism that suggests that work is art and art is work. And draws from Plato and Aristotle in its argument. Also Schiller.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Art, beyond its ideology, shows capitalism as clear as day.

Sometimes it is true, sometimes it isn’t. A new theory of aesthetics is needed to unite the critique of capital, a socialist/communist proposal and the aesthetic of delight/suffering.

[Roy Pérez · Rating 3 out of 5]

he invents new meanings for words. there's a glossary in the back. it doesn't help.

[Ruby · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
when I got it, I was really into it, but then I'm not sure I got the right things from this in the first place.

[Magdalena en su sepulcro · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Lo real debe ser ficcionado para ser pensado"


"El hombre es un animal político porque es un animal literario."

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not familiar with Rancière, but found my basic knowledge of art history / theory to carry me through the incredibly dense articulation. Didn’t always grapple with what he’s saying, but it did get easier.

Would have to read again, referencing the chunky glossary more often, but I think what he’s basically saying is that art and politics are about breaking norms of perception, and aesthetics are not this transcendent domain of ‘beauty’ and ‘taste’ but rather a struggle between what is allowed to be considered art/what is visible and given meaning. He outlines 3 regimes - the Ethical, Representative and Aesthetic, how art is categorised in these regimes and how it might be disrupted.

Notable because he breaks with Marxist theory that reduces art to an ideological critique, a direct response to politics, and instead he conceptualises art as political not when it has an overt political message, but when it ruptures what is seen in the ‘distribution of the sensible’.
The idea that politics isn’t just about governance but about general access to meaning that’s being disrupted all the time. Which makes me feel a bit more optimistic in the face of feeling as though there are no more frontiers for Art with a capital a.

What I found most interesting in Ranciére’s way of thinking is how he compares to Foucault (they are doing completely different things but i feel theres slight overlap).
Where Foucault provides a diagnostic about power and control as something vertical (top down), Rancière is the affirmative alternative interested in the disruption of order, where new possibilities appear (horizontal). There’s a radical faith in for the capacity of people to interrupt social order, and he articulates that this is already happening, and has been happening - always.

“Rancière’s thought is today more actual than ever: in our time of disorientation of the Left, his writings offer one of the few consistent conceptualisations of how we are to continue to resist.” —- afterword by Žižek



Best Chapters:
Artistic Regimes
Is History a Form of Fiction?

[batatairan1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gostei da divisão de regimes de identificação da arte feita pelo Rancière. Ele divide em três: ético, poético e estético.
O regime ético dimensiona a exposição platônica sobre a arte mimética numa perspectiva da arte como imagem. Em seu duplo efeito e considerando esta última perspectiva, a arte pode ser tanto vista em sua verdade como si, sua origem; quanto por seu destino e efeitos (RANCIÉRE, pág 28). Ou seja, não há aí uma clara demarcação acerca dos limites de onde acaba a arte ou a política, e é assim que se dá em Platão.
Ao condenar os poetas trágicos, Platão expõe ao mesmo tempo o que ele considera como a arte verdadeira, ou seja, a imitação com fins definidos ao invés da arte que simplesmente imita a aparência. Dessa interpretação platônica, se segue que não é possível individualizar a arte como tal, pois ela sempre estaria sempre submetida ao ethos da comunidade.
Já no regime poético, Rancière separa a mimésis apenas como categoria de imitação dentro da própria arte. Assim, a arte ser imitação em si nada diz sobre estar longe ou perto da verdade ou de seu uso como proveito da cidade, como dizia Platão. Antes, como pretende Aristóteles em sua Poética, a arte é considerada em sua ação, em seu fazer, não em seu ser:
"É o feito do poema, a fabricação de uma intriga que orquestra ações representando homens agindo, que importa, em detrimento do ser da imagem, cópia interrogada sobre seu modelo". (RANCIÉRE, pág. 30)
O último dos regimes, o estético, se contrapõe ao poético ao se despir de qualquer regra hierárquica das maneiras de fazer arte. Mas ao fazer isso, também destitui o fazer arte como algo diferente das outras maneiras de fazer numa perspectiva mimética. Mas mais que isso, é o ver a vida e a história com outros olhos. Algo muito bonito. Ele também dá diversos exemplos históricos e artísticos sobre.
Enfim, é um livro muito intrincado e desnecessariamente complicado. Mas achei algumas interpretações bastante interessantes.