The Lost Thread: The Democracy of Modern Fiction

by Jacques Rancière

In The Lost Thread, Rancière debunks the notion of Flaubert, Baudelaire, Conrad, Woolf and Keats as reactionary producers of bourgeois mythologies, and instead foregrounds the egalitarian and democratic impulses of modernist literature. Contrary to the canonical interpretation of the relation between modernism and capitalism via the commodification of everyday life, Rancière proposes a radical rethinking of our received ideas regarding the politics of aesthetics in the modern era.

Through a complex and original stitching together of form and content, modernists strove to depict by embodying new forms and regimes of material and everyday life. Rancière articulates this substantial change in the politics of representation by explaining the shattering of the sacrosanct hierarchies of the genres and life-forms of classical literature. In the midst of the 19th century, poets, novelists and playwrights challenged the narrative staples of noble means and moral ends, and introduced an entirely new “structure of feeling”. In this work, Ranciere continues his project of outlining an egalitarian “distribution of the sensible” as the compelling linkage between politics and aesthetics in the modern age. The Lost Thread not only advances Rancière's commended work on aesthetics, it also offers the reader in depth analyses of the writers in question.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

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

[Antônio Xerxenesky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessante pela releitura de Barthes e estranhamente compreensível considerando os outros ensaios de Rancière acerca de literatura.

[Blanche · Rating 3 out of 5]

c'était passionnant et en même temps j'ai l'impression de ne pas avoir tout saisi... sentiment normal pour moi avec Rancière...
*3,5

[Solenn]

Le Fil perdu est un de ces livres qui changent subtilement la manière dont on lit. Ce n’est pas un essai qui nous explique la littérature de l’extérieur : c’est un texte qui donne l’impression que nos propres lectures deviennent plus lumineuses, plus larges, presque plus libres.

J’ai adoré la manière dont Rancière parle du roman moderne — non comme d’un chaos narratif, mais comme d’un espace d’égalité. Dans sa lecture, tout peut devenir matière à fiction : un détail insignifiant, une sensation oubliée, un objet banal. Et soudain, je me suis surprise à certains auteurs, non plus comme des auteurs “difficiles”, mais comme des écrivains qui donnent droit d’existence à tout ce qui est habituellement ignoré.

Ce que j’ai le plus aimé : la douceur avec laquelle Rancière parle de la perte du fil. Ce n’est pas un échec, pas une désorientation ; c’est une autre façon d’habiter le monde, plus sensible, plus égalitaire, presque plus humaine.

C’est un livre exigeant, parfois dense, mais profondément stimulant. Il m’a donné envie de revoir la littérature comme un espace où rien n’est trop petit, trop insignifiant, trop marginal pour devenir important. Et c’est, je crois, une des plus belles promesses de la fiction.

[Maleau · Rating 5 out of 5]

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