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The Emancipated Spectator
The theorists of art and film commonly depict the modern audience as aesthetically and politically passive. In response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a communal performance.
In this follow-up to the acclaimed The Future of the Image , Rancière takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. First asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, ironically, a sad affirmation of its omnipotence?
In this follow-up to the acclaimed The Future of the Image , Rancière takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. First asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, ironically, a sad affirmation of its omnipotence?
134 pages, Hardcover
First published October 23, 2008
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3049 people want to read
About the author
Jacques Rancière
205 books485 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 - 30 of 73 reviews
November 9, 2011
This book is a set of five essays in response to Ranciere’s earlier work “The Ignorant Schoolmaster.” All of these pieces are tied together by Ranciere’s attempt to overcome the dyad so often associated with modernist aesthetics of passive spectator/active seer. The title essay extends the concept set forth in “The Ignorant Schoolmaster” by suggesting that the knowledge gap between the educated teacher and the student should be given up in place for an “equality of knowledge.” The goal of this is not to turn everyone into a scholar, however. As Ranciere says, “It is not the transmission of the artist’s knowledge or inspiration to the spectator. It is the third that is owned by no one, but which subsists between them, excluding any uniform transmission, any identity of cause and effect” (15). This is by far the most cogent and understandable of the essays in the collection, and it offers an interesting suggestion in rethinking the space between the actor and viewer, teacher and student, or any other relationship. However, it struck me as the kind of idea most at home in the world of theory, one that might not be well-translated into praxis.
The second essay, “The Misadventures of Critical Thought,” Ranciere criticizes the traditional role of the spectator by claiming that it, even though a mode of criticism itself, it “reproduces its own logic.” He looks at photos from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Vietnam, by Martha Rosler and Josephine Meckseper. Some people do not want to view these graphic photographs, however that very refusal perpetuates and continues the logic of the war in the first place. Therefore, a critical stance toward the image needs to shift away from this approach toward the uncoupling of two logics, “the emancipating logic of capacity and the critical logic of collective inveiglement” (48).
The last essay, “The Pensive Image,” sustains a further opening up between the formalist opposition of the active and passive. Ranciere argues for a shift – again, what he argues to be an emancipating shift – away from the “unifying logic of action” toward “a new status of the figure” (121). The end of pensiveness (of being, literally, “full of thought”) lies between narration and expression, one the mode of the active artist, the other of the passive spectator who fixes upon the artistic vision in order to impart to it a kind of reality.
Like a lot of (post)modern Continental writing, Ranciere’s writing can be elliptical, and his arguments somewhat hard to follow, perhaps because they are difficult to sustain, however engaging. I chose this because it was short enough and seemed like a suitable introduction to his body of work. The essays were interesting and provocatively argued, but sometimes they seemed less than original: for example, the title essay really seems to add nothing to the old breaking apart of the bipolar opposition of active and passive in theatre, art, and political conscientiousness; it recapitulates it nicely, but imports nothing new to the conversation. Those looking for ways to re-imagine issues in contemporary aesthetics will find something new here (as well as penetrating discussions of the poetry of Mallarme and the films of Abbas Kiarostami), but it will unnecessarily frustrate the casual reader.
The second essay, “The Misadventures of Critical Thought,” Ranciere criticizes the traditional role of the spectator by claiming that it, even though a mode of criticism itself, it “reproduces its own logic.” He looks at photos from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Vietnam, by Martha Rosler and Josephine Meckseper. Some people do not want to view these graphic photographs, however that very refusal perpetuates and continues the logic of the war in the first place. Therefore, a critical stance toward the image needs to shift away from this approach toward the uncoupling of two logics, “the emancipating logic of capacity and the critical logic of collective inveiglement” (48).
The last essay, “The Pensive Image,” sustains a further opening up between the formalist opposition of the active and passive. Ranciere argues for a shift – again, what he argues to be an emancipating shift – away from the “unifying logic of action” toward “a new status of the figure” (121). The end of pensiveness (of being, literally, “full of thought”) lies between narration and expression, one the mode of the active artist, the other of the passive spectator who fixes upon the artistic vision in order to impart to it a kind of reality.
Like a lot of (post)modern Continental writing, Ranciere’s writing can be elliptical, and his arguments somewhat hard to follow, perhaps because they are difficult to sustain, however engaging. I chose this because it was short enough and seemed like a suitable introduction to his body of work. The essays were interesting and provocatively argued, but sometimes they seemed less than original: for example, the title essay really seems to add nothing to the old breaking apart of the bipolar opposition of active and passive in theatre, art, and political conscientiousness; it recapitulates it nicely, but imports nothing new to the conversation. Those looking for ways to re-imagine issues in contemporary aesthetics will find something new here (as well as penetrating discussions of the poetry of Mallarme and the films of Abbas Kiarostami), but it will unnecessarily frustrate the casual reader.
September 13, 2011
Posted on my book blog.
Earlier this year I went to a conference in Lisbon in which Jacques Rancière and Hans Belting discussed various problematics regarding the image. Despite having unfortunately chosen a seat next to a gentleman who kept falling asleep and loudly snoring, I enjoyed the talk, and was intrigued enough to delve into Jacques Rancière’s work (I was already familiar with Hans Belting’s).
The author has some thought-provoking ideas, and he writes in such a clear, logical way that I ended up liking this book a lot, even though I didn’t quite agree with all his points. The book comprises five essays (the results of various talks given all over the world), all of which are highly intelligent, well-developed, and far too long and detailed for me to discuss here, so I’ll just list them briefly.
The first of them, The Emancipated Spectator, is about the problematic of the spectator in the art of theatre, which was interesting to me since theatre is probably the art form I’m least versed in. The author raises some very good points about whether the spectator is passive or active, and if that should be addressed or changed by the actors. Next came The Misadventures of Critical Thinking, which explores the tradition of criticizing art and whether that tradition (or its denial) is relevant nowadays. The Paradoxes of Political Art was one of the most interesting to me, since it delved deep into the contradictions inherent to political, and politicized, art. The last two, The Intolerable Image and The Thinking Image, were closer to the lecture I listened to and focused mainly on images and visual arts.
This is a book well-worth reading, and I also recommend searching for the responses to these ideas by other authors, some of which can be found online.
Earlier this year I went to a conference in Lisbon in which Jacques Rancière and Hans Belting discussed various problematics regarding the image. Despite having unfortunately chosen a seat next to a gentleman who kept falling asleep and loudly snoring, I enjoyed the talk, and was intrigued enough to delve into Jacques Rancière’s work (I was already familiar with Hans Belting’s).
The author has some thought-provoking ideas, and he writes in such a clear, logical way that I ended up liking this book a lot, even though I didn’t quite agree with all his points. The book comprises five essays (the results of various talks given all over the world), all of which are highly intelligent, well-developed, and far too long and detailed for me to discuss here, so I’ll just list them briefly.
The first of them, The Emancipated Spectator, is about the problematic of the spectator in the art of theatre, which was interesting to me since theatre is probably the art form I’m least versed in. The author raises some very good points about whether the spectator is passive or active, and if that should be addressed or changed by the actors. Next came The Misadventures of Critical Thinking, which explores the tradition of criticizing art and whether that tradition (or its denial) is relevant nowadays. The Paradoxes of Political Art was one of the most interesting to me, since it delved deep into the contradictions inherent to political, and politicized, art. The last two, The Intolerable Image and The Thinking Image, were closer to the lecture I listened to and focused mainly on images and visual arts.
This is a book well-worth reading, and I also recommend searching for the responses to these ideas by other authors, some of which can be found online.
Read
December 21, 2019İkinci okumam Özgürleşen Seyirci'yi. Bu kez daha bir dikkatle, üzerine düşünerek okudum ve daha önceki okumamın yetersiz bir okuma olduğunu fark ettim. Günlük yaşama nasıl uyarlanabilir tüm bunlar, bunu düşünerek okuak gerek bana kalırsa. Yaptıklarımız, içinde boğulma tehlikesi ile karşı karşıya olduğumuz rutinleri, uzlaşıları nasıl tersyüz edebilir? Bir roman ya da öykü nasıl ''yepyeni'' olabilir. İnsan kendi dilini nasıl bulabilir?
Bana abuk, beni şaşırtacak bir cümle söyle, ayağımı bastığım zeminler tir tir titresin, nolur!
Bana abuk, beni şaşırtacak bir cümle söyle, ayağımı bastığım zeminler tir tir titresin, nolur!
June 21, 2019
"Öğrenci, bilgin konumuna geçmek için değil, tercüme sanatını daha iyi uygulayabilmek, tecrübelerini kelimelere dökebilmek ve kelimelerini sınayabilmek; entelektüel maceralarını başkalarının faydalanması için tercüme edebilmek ve onların kendi maceralarını sundukları tercümeleri kendi diline tercüme edebilmek
için öğrenir. Onun bu yolu katetmesine yardım edecek cahil hocanın böyle bir ad almasının sebebi, hiçbir şey bilmemesi değil, "cahilin bilmediğini bilme iddiasını" reddetmesi ve bilgisiyle hocalığını birbirinden ayırmasıdır. Öğrencilerine kendi bildiğini öğretmez; onlardan şeyler ve
gördüklerini ve gördüklerinden ne anladıklarını söylemelerini, bunu teyit etmelerini ve teyit ettirmelerini ister. Cahil hocanın bilmediği, kabul etmediği şey, zekâların eşitsizliğidir. Her mesafe olgusal bir mesafedir ve her entelektüel edim cehalet ile bilgi arasında katedilen bir yoldur -bütün o sınırlarıyla birlikte her türden sabitliği ve konumlar hiyerarşisini hiç durmaksızın ortadan kaldıran bir yol."
Ranciere'nin Cahil Hoca kitabını ne çok sevmiştim. Bu kitabı da Cahil Hoca'yı yazarken aldığı notlardan oluşuyor.
Seyircinin edilgen olma durumunun artık sona ermesini ve yaşayışla iç içe geçen sanat eserlerinin üretiminin desteklenmesini öngörüyor. Müze ve sanat merkezlerine hapsolan üretimlerin artık hareket etmesini, nefes almasını istiyor.
Oldukça düşündürücü ve bazı yerlerde tekrar tekrar okuma isteği uyandıran çok güçlü bir kitap bence..
"Sanatın dışında kalacak bir gerçek dünya yoktur; algılarımızın, düşüncelerimizin ve müdahalelerimizin nesnesi olarak, gerçeğimiz olarak bize sunulmuş olanın yapılandırmaları vardır. Gerçek her zaman için bir kurmaca inşasıdır - yani görülür, söylenilir ve yapılır olanın birbirine bağlandığı bir mekanın inşası. ... Politik eylem olarak sanatsak kurmaca da bu gerçeği didikler, bu gerçeği polemik bir biçimde parçalayıp çoğaltır. Yeni özneler icat edip yeni nesnelerle gündelik verilere dair başka türlü bir algı ortaya çıkaran politikanın işleyişi de kurmacaya dayalı bir işleyiştir."
için öğrenir. Onun bu yolu katetmesine yardım edecek cahil hocanın böyle bir ad almasının sebebi, hiçbir şey bilmemesi değil, "cahilin bilmediğini bilme iddiasını" reddetmesi ve bilgisiyle hocalığını birbirinden ayırmasıdır. Öğrencilerine kendi bildiğini öğretmez; onlardan şeyler ve
gördüklerini ve gördüklerinden ne anladıklarını söylemelerini, bunu teyit etmelerini ve teyit ettirmelerini ister. Cahil hocanın bilmediği, kabul etmediği şey, zekâların eşitsizliğidir. Her mesafe olgusal bir mesafedir ve her entelektüel edim cehalet ile bilgi arasında katedilen bir yoldur -bütün o sınırlarıyla birlikte her türden sabitliği ve konumlar hiyerarşisini hiç durmaksızın ortadan kaldıran bir yol."
Ranciere'nin Cahil Hoca kitabını ne çok sevmiştim. Bu kitabı da Cahil Hoca'yı yazarken aldığı notlardan oluşuyor.
Seyircinin edilgen olma durumunun artık sona ermesini ve yaşayışla iç içe geçen sanat eserlerinin üretiminin desteklenmesini öngörüyor. Müze ve sanat merkezlerine hapsolan üretimlerin artık hareket etmesini, nefes almasını istiyor.
Oldukça düşündürücü ve bazı yerlerde tekrar tekrar okuma isteği uyandıran çok güçlü bir kitap bence..
"Sanatın dışında kalacak bir gerçek dünya yoktur; algılarımızın, düşüncelerimizin ve müdahalelerimizin nesnesi olarak, gerçeğimiz olarak bize sunulmuş olanın yapılandırmaları vardır. Gerçek her zaman için bir kurmaca inşasıdır - yani görülür, söylenilir ve yapılır olanın birbirine bağlandığı bir mekanın inşası. ... Politik eylem olarak sanatsak kurmaca da bu gerçeği didikler, bu gerçeği polemik bir biçimde parçalayıp çoğaltır. Yeni özneler icat edip yeni nesnelerle gündelik verilere dair başka türlü bir algı ortaya çıkaran politikanın işleyişi de kurmacaya dayalı bir işleyiştir."
May 29, 2009
A fascinating take on spectatorship and the image. The strongest essay in this collection is its opening (and title) essay which examines the relationship of the spectator to his/her community and suggests (strongly) that there are not different forms of spectatorship, only equal rights of spectatorship. Reminiscent of Freire. The later essays take to task Barthes while relying on DeLeuze and others in support of appreciating modern image making as an evolution rather than a repudiation of image aesthetics and cultural fabrication.
Read
November 2, 2017Resim, fotoğraf, kolaj, heykel, tiyatro, sinema ve edebiyat alanında bir şeyler üretmeye çalışan veya üretilen şeylere bakmayı, onları okumayı, izlemeyi, incelemeyi seven ve bunu bir ilgi alanı addeden herkese tavsiyemdir.
October 7, 2018
En medio del debate sostenido durante los años ochenta en Francia sobre el rol de la escuela pública en la sociedad actual, Rancière escribe una crítica en su libro El Maestro Ignorante contra la idea de una instrucción del pueblo, mientras cuestiona la posición pasiva y frágil en la que se situaban a los receptores de dicha educación. En esta ocasión, sus reflexiones sobre la relación saber-poder toman parte en otro escenario de análisis: el teatro y las artes performáticas. La tarea consistirá, dice, en señalar los presupuestos que ubican al espectador en cierta posición respecto a lo que sabe.
Dicha posición es presentada como una paradoja, la cual señala que “no hay teatro sin espectador”. Dicha enunciación es reconocida como la crítica clásica del Teatro, expuesta por Platón en el libro II de La República. Lo señala como un mal, pues considera que el acto de mirar se contrapone al de conocer, pues el espectador ignora el artificio del teatro y lo que sostiene la magia de la escena; como también al de actuar, pues este cede su movimiento a los actores y se inmoviliza para poder observarlos. Aquel que mira está arrojado a una experiencia engañosa e inmovilizadora. Así, se abren dos interpretaciones diferentes bajo esta luz: la primera, que el teatro debería abolirse para permitir que algunos sujetos supriman su letargo; la segunda, que la justicia está en las sociedades que prescinden de espectadores y sólo cuenta con miembros activos.
Las grandes reformas a este no habrían surgido sino hasta el siglo XX, resultado del replanteamiento de dichas relaciones analizadas por el pensador griego. En el teatro épico de Bertolt Brecht, el espectador toma la figura de indagador minucioso de las causas de los acontecimientos que se le presentan, se desviste de su posición pasiva y se le exige evaluar la discusión e incluso su posición de observador; es decir, se convierte en un personaje mudo dentro de la obra. Por otro lado, en el teatro de la crueldad de Antonin Artaud, toda distancia debe ser anulada, incluso la razonadora, y el escenario debe extenderse sin límites, devorar vorazmente el espacio y la pasividad del espectador. “Platón quería sustituir la comunidad democrática e ignorante del teatro por otra comunidad…”, dice Rancière y propone con esa palabra un vínculo estrecho entre la organización política y el teatro como formación comunitaria o asamblea. “El teatro sigue siendo el único lugar de confrontación del público consigo mismo en tanto que colectivo”, añade. La reforma al teatro fue un ejercicio poderosamente político ante los ojos de estos dos dramaturgos, quienes se ampararon bajo la sombra de la crítica platónica para escribir sus manifiestos.
De esta manera, se vislumbra un axioma inevitable: “Cuanto más se contempla, menos se es”; pero también una respuesta directa: “el buen teatro es aquel que utiliza la separación de la realidad para suprimirla”. Conviene, entonces, revisar los presupuestos que sostienen toda esta teoría del teatro, pues las equivalencias que se encuentran en juego allí podrían reformular las formas sensibles de la experiencia humana o repensar la organización de nuestra sociedad por medio de, en palabras de Rancière, la emancipación intelectual del espectador. Al entablar un paralelo con la escuela pública, el espectador, al igual que el alumno, está distanciado del saber. Esa brecha que lo divide del maestro no puede ser eliminada a menos que sea nombrada constantemente, pues el ignorante no sabe nunca aquello que desconoce. “Así, lo que siempre le faltará al alumno es el saber de la ignorancia, el conocimiento de la distancia exacta que separa el saber de la ignorancia”.
Parece generarse inmediatamente un eco del discurso del Amo de Lacan, en donde un sujeto que posee un conocimiento, reconocido como Amo, ejerce una relación de poder frente a aquel Otro que lo desconoce, mientras hace de él su esclavo. Esa relación es denominada aquí como la práctica del embrutecimiento, la cual es opuesta a la emancipación intelectual. Es justo allí, en sus reflexiones sobre las prácticas del embrutecimiento, de donde parte su tesis, pues el dramaturgo o el director teatral quiere tener pleno poder de lo que acontece dentro del espectador: lo que debe ver, sentir, hacer e interpretar; presupone una identidad entre la causa de su obra y el efecto en el espectador.
El espectador emancipado será entonces aquel que cuestione dicha identidad, que disminuya la distancia que se abre entre él y la guía de su maestro, dramaturgo o amo. Es, según el autor, “la emancipación cómo reapropiación de una relación consigo mismo, perdida en un proceso de separación”. Pero bajo esa perspectiva, la emancipación podría ocurrir no solamente en el teatro, sino en cualquier lugar en que haya un escenario comunitario, una asamblea, sin la necesidad de ser interactivo, sino promotor de heterogeneidad y vinculante de las inteligencias que lo componen. La atención especial prestada al teatro se debe principalmente por presuposiciones históricas de que es en ese arte en donde la comunidad se confronta a sí misma. “No hay forma privilegiada, así como no hay punto de partida privilegiado. Por todas partes hay puntos de partida, cruzamientos y nudos que nos permiten aprender algo nuevo si recusamos en primer lugar la distancia radical, en segundo lugar, la distribución de los roles y, en tercer lugar, las fronteras entre los territorios. Lo que tenemos que hacer es reconocer el saber que obra en el ignorante y la actividad propia del espectador.”, concluye. El espectador emancipado es propuesto, así, como un narrador de su propia historia, como también un traductor de las historias de las que es testigo. En ese trabajo de narración y traducción está el lugar de la comunidad emancipada. El teatro, o ese lugar en donde se invita al espectador, ha de ser el núcleo en donde se exprese la vitalidad misma de la comunidad, donde se teje incesantemente nuevas relaciones entre significados y experiencias para la expansión de los horizontes del lenguaje y, por tanto, de la sociedad. Es decir, en el lenguaje filosófico de Rancière, el teatro posibilita un escenario para el disenso.
Tangencialmente se genera otro eco a lo largo del texto desde la crítica hecha a Adorno y Horkheimer por sus posiciones frente a la industria cultural de los periodos de entreguerras y postguerra, a partir de lo que ellos denominaron como la mistificación de las masas. Habría que examinar con detenimiento la posible relación entre sus enunciados y su correlación con los de Rancière, los cuales, desde una primera vista, parecen ser compatibles y complementarios; pero que de seguro mantienen diferencias sustanciales al ser Rancière reconocido hoy en día como uno de los grandes críticos de la Escuela de Frankfurt. También se sugiere un espacio para reflexionar acerca de la sociedad que devendría de la emancipación de sus espectadores, pues seguramente el modelo político democrático sufriría una profunda modificación, sino una inevitable extinción. Es esto lo que está verdaderamente en cuestión dentro del texto; no solo los modelos políticos, sino también las diferentes instituciones y agentes que distribuyen el poder incesantemente de todos esos “narradores y traductores”.
Pareciera intuirse también una posición crítica frente a las prácticas de las artes performáticas, pues esa agudeza crítica que se elucubra en el centro del texto también es una guía para, al menos, distinguir y difundir aquello que merece tener una relevancia política y social dentro de la vasta oferta existente, sin ser el fin de este ejercicio el establecer cánones o multiplicar relaciones de poder ya establecidas dentro de una misma industria; sino, por el contrario, revertir esas relaciones unidireccionales y posibilitar el disenso.
Dicha posición es presentada como una paradoja, la cual señala que “no hay teatro sin espectador”. Dicha enunciación es reconocida como la crítica clásica del Teatro, expuesta por Platón en el libro II de La República. Lo señala como un mal, pues considera que el acto de mirar se contrapone al de conocer, pues el espectador ignora el artificio del teatro y lo que sostiene la magia de la escena; como también al de actuar, pues este cede su movimiento a los actores y se inmoviliza para poder observarlos. Aquel que mira está arrojado a una experiencia engañosa e inmovilizadora. Así, se abren dos interpretaciones diferentes bajo esta luz: la primera, que el teatro debería abolirse para permitir que algunos sujetos supriman su letargo; la segunda, que la justicia está en las sociedades que prescinden de espectadores y sólo cuenta con miembros activos.
Las grandes reformas a este no habrían surgido sino hasta el siglo XX, resultado del replanteamiento de dichas relaciones analizadas por el pensador griego. En el teatro épico de Bertolt Brecht, el espectador toma la figura de indagador minucioso de las causas de los acontecimientos que se le presentan, se desviste de su posición pasiva y se le exige evaluar la discusión e incluso su posición de observador; es decir, se convierte en un personaje mudo dentro de la obra. Por otro lado, en el teatro de la crueldad de Antonin Artaud, toda distancia debe ser anulada, incluso la razonadora, y el escenario debe extenderse sin límites, devorar vorazmente el espacio y la pasividad del espectador. “Platón quería sustituir la comunidad democrática e ignorante del teatro por otra comunidad…”, dice Rancière y propone con esa palabra un vínculo estrecho entre la organización política y el teatro como formación comunitaria o asamblea. “El teatro sigue siendo el único lugar de confrontación del público consigo mismo en tanto que colectivo”, añade. La reforma al teatro fue un ejercicio poderosamente político ante los ojos de estos dos dramaturgos, quienes se ampararon bajo la sombra de la crítica platónica para escribir sus manifiestos.
De esta manera, se vislumbra un axioma inevitable: “Cuanto más se contempla, menos se es”; pero también una respuesta directa: “el buen teatro es aquel que utiliza la separación de la realidad para suprimirla”. Conviene, entonces, revisar los presupuestos que sostienen toda esta teoría del teatro, pues las equivalencias que se encuentran en juego allí podrían reformular las formas sensibles de la experiencia humana o repensar la organización de nuestra sociedad por medio de, en palabras de Rancière, la emancipación intelectual del espectador. Al entablar un paralelo con la escuela pública, el espectador, al igual que el alumno, está distanciado del saber. Esa brecha que lo divide del maestro no puede ser eliminada a menos que sea nombrada constantemente, pues el ignorante no sabe nunca aquello que desconoce. “Así, lo que siempre le faltará al alumno es el saber de la ignorancia, el conocimiento de la distancia exacta que separa el saber de la ignorancia”.
Parece generarse inmediatamente un eco del discurso del Amo de Lacan, en donde un sujeto que posee un conocimiento, reconocido como Amo, ejerce una relación de poder frente a aquel Otro que lo desconoce, mientras hace de él su esclavo. Esa relación es denominada aquí como la práctica del embrutecimiento, la cual es opuesta a la emancipación intelectual. Es justo allí, en sus reflexiones sobre las prácticas del embrutecimiento, de donde parte su tesis, pues el dramaturgo o el director teatral quiere tener pleno poder de lo que acontece dentro del espectador: lo que debe ver, sentir, hacer e interpretar; presupone una identidad entre la causa de su obra y el efecto en el espectador.
El espectador emancipado será entonces aquel que cuestione dicha identidad, que disminuya la distancia que se abre entre él y la guía de su maestro, dramaturgo o amo. Es, según el autor, “la emancipación cómo reapropiación de una relación consigo mismo, perdida en un proceso de separación”. Pero bajo esa perspectiva, la emancipación podría ocurrir no solamente en el teatro, sino en cualquier lugar en que haya un escenario comunitario, una asamblea, sin la necesidad de ser interactivo, sino promotor de heterogeneidad y vinculante de las inteligencias que lo componen. La atención especial prestada al teatro se debe principalmente por presuposiciones históricas de que es en ese arte en donde la comunidad se confronta a sí misma. “No hay forma privilegiada, así como no hay punto de partida privilegiado. Por todas partes hay puntos de partida, cruzamientos y nudos que nos permiten aprender algo nuevo si recusamos en primer lugar la distancia radical, en segundo lugar, la distribución de los roles y, en tercer lugar, las fronteras entre los territorios. Lo que tenemos que hacer es reconocer el saber que obra en el ignorante y la actividad propia del espectador.”, concluye. El espectador emancipado es propuesto, así, como un narrador de su propia historia, como también un traductor de las historias de las que es testigo. En ese trabajo de narración y traducción está el lugar de la comunidad emancipada. El teatro, o ese lugar en donde se invita al espectador, ha de ser el núcleo en donde se exprese la vitalidad misma de la comunidad, donde se teje incesantemente nuevas relaciones entre significados y experiencias para la expansión de los horizontes del lenguaje y, por tanto, de la sociedad. Es decir, en el lenguaje filosófico de Rancière, el teatro posibilita un escenario para el disenso.
Tangencialmente se genera otro eco a lo largo del texto desde la crítica hecha a Adorno y Horkheimer por sus posiciones frente a la industria cultural de los periodos de entreguerras y postguerra, a partir de lo que ellos denominaron como la mistificación de las masas. Habría que examinar con detenimiento la posible relación entre sus enunciados y su correlación con los de Rancière, los cuales, desde una primera vista, parecen ser compatibles y complementarios; pero que de seguro mantienen diferencias sustanciales al ser Rancière reconocido hoy en día como uno de los grandes críticos de la Escuela de Frankfurt. También se sugiere un espacio para reflexionar acerca de la sociedad que devendría de la emancipación de sus espectadores, pues seguramente el modelo político democrático sufriría una profunda modificación, sino una inevitable extinción. Es esto lo que está verdaderamente en cuestión dentro del texto; no solo los modelos políticos, sino también las diferentes instituciones y agentes que distribuyen el poder incesantemente de todos esos “narradores y traductores”.
Pareciera intuirse también una posición crítica frente a las prácticas de las artes performáticas, pues esa agudeza crítica que se elucubra en el centro del texto también es una guía para, al menos, distinguir y difundir aquello que merece tener una relevancia política y social dentro de la vasta oferta existente, sin ser el fin de este ejercicio el establecer cánones o multiplicar relaciones de poder ya establecidas dentro de una misma industria; sino, por el contrario, revertir esas relaciones unidireccionales y posibilitar el disenso.
February 1, 2013
The first chapter puts forward the core idea that there has been a myth of peoples passivity generated from the established left which has been a central plank of classism by persuading people of the inequality of intelligence between them and their masters. Ranciere talks about abrutir rather than oppression. The crude idea of the inert masses was disposed of well before John Carey's 'The Intellectual and the Masses: : Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia 1880-1939' came out in 1992. Before that the idea of the myth of the audience as passive victims of the mass media was taken apart by many in Media and Communication studies. See Ien Ang's 1995 summary in which he concludes: "Media audiences are not 'masses' - anonymous and passive aggregates of people without identity. …media audiences are active in the ways they use, interpret, and take pleasure in media products. …We cannot say in advance which meanings and effects media content will have on audiences" (Downing et al. Sage, 1995, p.219). So Ranciere is following a well established media studies trend that he probably contributed to with his earlier writings.
Ranciere directs this analysis at some of my favourite French theorists from Guy Debord to Pierre Bourdieu. Debord's 1967 'Society of the Spectacle', and its idea of a worId transfixed by consumption, was something I almost revered in my twenties. In spite of the academic groundwork done in the previous 20 years that I was aware of, reading Ranciere's analysis felt like shaking off a long dead leech. Ranciere is perhaps the first higher ranking philosopher to dare confront icons of the Marxist radical left with their, and our, own classism.
The criticism of Pierre Bourdieu that follows in chapter 2 is something similar to what I wrote less elegantly, back in 1993. Bourdieu does not understand how the stratification of taste that he measures as cultural norms is negated by the actions of autodidacts and other outsiders who do not figure in his sociological surveys. Bourdieu only recognises individual cultural agency by young bourgeois.
The suggestion in Emancipated Spectator is that things like participation art only reinforce the idea that the audience are usually passive receptacles. Ranciere points out that predetermined outcomes cannot be emancipatory because for an artwork to be emancipatory the viewer has to be making judgements based on their own knowledge and experience. (referring back to The Ignorant Schoolmaster).
The idea that individuals need to be thinking for themselves is hardly new and it is to Ranciere's credit that he refreshes it and leads on to a set of philosophical problems about the relation between the individual and the collective. The rest of the book mainly concerns these questions. For Ranciere both conditions are co-terminus without any need for consensus. In fact dissensus is better. Dissensus is almost our natural condition as autonomous individuals in a dynamic state of communication about their inevitably different subject positions. Emancipation is then down to "collectivising our capacities invested in scenes of dissensus".
In chapter three he uses a phrase from Mallarme, 'Separes est on ensemble', to explore how we can be both individuals that think for ourselves and achieve a liberating 'solidarity' that doesn't flatten our differences. He goes on to discuss how this idea relates to our contemplations on art. He is emphatic that the sensory world of the artist is separate from that of the viewer and that there is no right way to think about art and never has been. Some of the most influential conventional writing about art has been a celebration of interpretation set free of any originally intent, use or context. Things that are not used for their intended purposes.
This is the point at which I start to feel the analysis is unsatisfactory. Up to now my intuition and previous studies make me think he is right about equality of intelligence and what follows, but the idea that the reading of art is separate from any intention of the artist and that artistic intention cannot be at all rhetorical, if it is to be emancipatory, is more difficult. As an artist focused on social change it is difficult to imagine the removal of intentionality from work. Or to be at all precise about how to make work that enables emancipation rather than adding to 'stultification'.
Recently I saw the 'Seduced by Art' photography and painting show at London's National Gallery. The show opens with Jeff Wall's large 1978 'The Destroyed Room' photograph. Wall is said to use a 'strategy of quotation without direct imitation' and it is implied as a key to reading the whole show. The influence of Delacroix's 1853 painting “The Death of Sardanapalus” is claimed. I'd rather have seen it separate from being told how to look at it. I very much felt that such curatorial guidance was closing off any of my own thought. That is stultification. My own thoughts on seeing this work in reproduction were very different. I did not want to have this framework forced onto my first viewing of the actual print. However I suspect that Wall may have made this claim originally as much as a strategy to have his work shown as Art as something he wished to frame the work with.
Ranciere would say that any situation is readable in an emancipatory fashion if we don't bow down to the strategies of abrutir but engage our minds in an effort to deconstruct the forces that would limit and channel our thinking. This is not easy to do as a lone mind, and I find it happens better in discussion with others.
Ranciere manages to jiggle my thinking but as an analysis there are too many variables. I feel there is also something missing.
In the final chapter he considers an idea of the 'pensive' image. It seems related to Barthes earlier idea of the third meaning. The Pensive image provides a zone of indeterminacy in relation to which emancipatory thought is possible. This is a more positive way of thinking but is still tentative and incomplete.
What is missing is the idea that it is the exclusive selection of art that leads to particular constellations being brought to public attention. Any set of interests will be unlikely to present art that allows a critical appraisal of its own core supports to be revealed to the public. The sets of interest that present art most widely and influentially are the state and the larger globalised commercial galleries. It is difficult for most of us to see how these interests are manifest within the particular selections of any show. It is difficult for us to see what has been left out from the totality of the field from which the selection is made. It is often through quite subtle absences which we could never be privy to. The whole skill of the state managers of culture is to hide these formations of upper class patriarchal interest with a smokescreen of good taste and the flair that comes with having money to spend on design and presentation.
For me these institutional formations are more important to the abrutir of high culture than the works of artists in themselves. By not attacking these institutions, and in fact relying on their patronage, as pointed out by JJ Charlesworth's short review in Art Review when the book came out, Ranciere is doing the emancipation project a disservice. Taking our attention away from the institutionalised source of cultural oppression and directing it towards more abstract ideas of our perception of artworks.
Nonetheless, the book still has a message that is inimicable to the interests of those institutions that hosted the talks that led to these very chapters if we keep in mind where he is coming from. My final feeling is that Ranciere is a subversive hoping to, in his own words, crack open culture from the inside'? For those of us for ever on the outside; we perhaps need more of a praxis of contextually disruptive micro-audiences, as well as a macro analysis of arts patronage by capital.
To see my full notes on each chapter see:
http://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.co.u...
Ranciere directs this analysis at some of my favourite French theorists from Guy Debord to Pierre Bourdieu. Debord's 1967 'Society of the Spectacle', and its idea of a worId transfixed by consumption, was something I almost revered in my twenties. In spite of the academic groundwork done in the previous 20 years that I was aware of, reading Ranciere's analysis felt like shaking off a long dead leech. Ranciere is perhaps the first higher ranking philosopher to dare confront icons of the Marxist radical left with their, and our, own classism.
The criticism of Pierre Bourdieu that follows in chapter 2 is something similar to what I wrote less elegantly, back in 1993. Bourdieu does not understand how the stratification of taste that he measures as cultural norms is negated by the actions of autodidacts and other outsiders who do not figure in his sociological surveys. Bourdieu only recognises individual cultural agency by young bourgeois.
The suggestion in Emancipated Spectator is that things like participation art only reinforce the idea that the audience are usually passive receptacles. Ranciere points out that predetermined outcomes cannot be emancipatory because for an artwork to be emancipatory the viewer has to be making judgements based on their own knowledge and experience. (referring back to The Ignorant Schoolmaster).
The idea that individuals need to be thinking for themselves is hardly new and it is to Ranciere's credit that he refreshes it and leads on to a set of philosophical problems about the relation between the individual and the collective. The rest of the book mainly concerns these questions. For Ranciere both conditions are co-terminus without any need for consensus. In fact dissensus is better. Dissensus is almost our natural condition as autonomous individuals in a dynamic state of communication about their inevitably different subject positions. Emancipation is then down to "collectivising our capacities invested in scenes of dissensus".
In chapter three he uses a phrase from Mallarme, 'Separes est on ensemble', to explore how we can be both individuals that think for ourselves and achieve a liberating 'solidarity' that doesn't flatten our differences. He goes on to discuss how this idea relates to our contemplations on art. He is emphatic that the sensory world of the artist is separate from that of the viewer and that there is no right way to think about art and never has been. Some of the most influential conventional writing about art has been a celebration of interpretation set free of any originally intent, use or context. Things that are not used for their intended purposes.
This is the point at which I start to feel the analysis is unsatisfactory. Up to now my intuition and previous studies make me think he is right about equality of intelligence and what follows, but the idea that the reading of art is separate from any intention of the artist and that artistic intention cannot be at all rhetorical, if it is to be emancipatory, is more difficult. As an artist focused on social change it is difficult to imagine the removal of intentionality from work. Or to be at all precise about how to make work that enables emancipation rather than adding to 'stultification'.
Recently I saw the 'Seduced by Art' photography and painting show at London's National Gallery. The show opens with Jeff Wall's large 1978 'The Destroyed Room' photograph. Wall is said to use a 'strategy of quotation without direct imitation' and it is implied as a key to reading the whole show. The influence of Delacroix's 1853 painting “The Death of Sardanapalus” is claimed. I'd rather have seen it separate from being told how to look at it. I very much felt that such curatorial guidance was closing off any of my own thought. That is stultification. My own thoughts on seeing this work in reproduction were very different. I did not want to have this framework forced onto my first viewing of the actual print. However I suspect that Wall may have made this claim originally as much as a strategy to have his work shown as Art as something he wished to frame the work with.
Ranciere would say that any situation is readable in an emancipatory fashion if we don't bow down to the strategies of abrutir but engage our minds in an effort to deconstruct the forces that would limit and channel our thinking. This is not easy to do as a lone mind, and I find it happens better in discussion with others.
Ranciere manages to jiggle my thinking but as an analysis there are too many variables. I feel there is also something missing.
In the final chapter he considers an idea of the 'pensive' image. It seems related to Barthes earlier idea of the third meaning. The Pensive image provides a zone of indeterminacy in relation to which emancipatory thought is possible. This is a more positive way of thinking but is still tentative and incomplete.
What is missing is the idea that it is the exclusive selection of art that leads to particular constellations being brought to public attention. Any set of interests will be unlikely to present art that allows a critical appraisal of its own core supports to be revealed to the public. The sets of interest that present art most widely and influentially are the state and the larger globalised commercial galleries. It is difficult for most of us to see how these interests are manifest within the particular selections of any show. It is difficult for us to see what has been left out from the totality of the field from which the selection is made. It is often through quite subtle absences which we could never be privy to. The whole skill of the state managers of culture is to hide these formations of upper class patriarchal interest with a smokescreen of good taste and the flair that comes with having money to spend on design and presentation.
For me these institutional formations are more important to the abrutir of high culture than the works of artists in themselves. By not attacking these institutions, and in fact relying on their patronage, as pointed out by JJ Charlesworth's short review in Art Review when the book came out, Ranciere is doing the emancipation project a disservice. Taking our attention away from the institutionalised source of cultural oppression and directing it towards more abstract ideas of our perception of artworks.
Nonetheless, the book still has a message that is inimicable to the interests of those institutions that hosted the talks that led to these very chapters if we keep in mind where he is coming from. My final feeling is that Ranciere is a subversive hoping to, in his own words, crack open culture from the inside'? For those of us for ever on the outside; we perhaps need more of a praxis of contextually disruptive micro-audiences, as well as a macro analysis of arts patronage by capital.
To see my full notes on each chapter see:
http://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.co.u...
November 12, 2025
Más un 3,5. Me ha gustado pero a veces se me hacía largo. A veces decía cosas chulísimas y yo me quedaba mirando la página y diciendo wooooow un rato largo, y a veces me daba un poco de pereza. No termino de tener claro cómo me cae este señor pero me hace pensar y he aprendido mucho!! Interesante pero no releería.
January 12, 2022
Eher eine seiner schwächeren Bücher. Theorie ist im ersten Kapitel, der Rest sind nur Analysen. Trotzdem sehr interessante Einblicke und ausgewählte Werke.
January 14, 2025
lida a metade pero bueno
September 7, 2012
Ranciere takes exception to the idea of the passive spectator in the world of aesthetics. He posits a power of the spectator that is reactivated in performance (he gives the example of theatre). Intelligence that constructs the performance for the spectator generates energy and thus reformulates a concept of theatre where the spectator becomes an active participant. “…intelligence is always at work—an intelligence that translates signs into other signs and proceeds by comparison and illustrations in order to communicate its intellectual adventures and understand what another intelligence is endeavouring to communicate to it” . This paradigmatic shift is also opposed to three currents of thought on aesthetics, namely modernist, post-modern, and the sublimation of the aesthetic. He criticizes them for not adequately treating what he calls the "aesthetic break", where there is no boundary between concepts realm of art and the realm of the real. He draws on everything from photography and painting to literature, from the fine arts to the perorming arts. The spectator is then understood to act like the pupil or scholar (his previous book discusses this relationship and this forms the derivative of concepts in this volume) where he/she observes, selects, and compares this with what he/she has seen in other places, on "other stages". Applying this to poetry, the spectator can be understood to producing a new poem by participating in its performance. “Being a spectator is not some passive condition that we should transform into activity. It is our normal situation”. With this concept, Ranciere challenges communitarian logic of the spectator, the activity particular to it is constructed through transference and becomes a spectator in the simultaneity of the performance and the performance of the spectator his/herself.
December 28, 2014
Tough and demanding. You really have to stay focus and well concentrated to really appreciate this book and its meaning. Ranciere tries to connect 3 different corners of the same spectrum: art, politics and the spectator; and he does that with such a brilliant way of writing, going through several references since Walker Evans till the portuguese director Pedro Costa. What lacks in literary accessibility spares on literary intelligence.
August 3, 2022
I loved the title essay, and the final two essays titled “the intolerable image” and “the pensive image.” I think the arguments in “the misadventures of critical thought” and “aesthetic separation, aesthetic community” were slightly lost on me but I expect I’ll return to them as they are the essays which most explicitly tackle the connection between politics and art.
November 9, 2015
A mixture of intriguing new theoretical avenues and complete bullshit. Chapters one and two are really refreshing for a weary student of theory. Read those and ignore the rest of the book.
November 11, 2023
Zizek’s quote on the front cover, “…one of the few conceptualizations of how we are to continue to resist,” I think provides a slightly “slant” way of approaching The Emancipated Spectator. The content, however, like that of other, related books that address some of its topical matter from the point of view of a discipline, such as A Thousand Plateaus, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist…, and so forth, can fit into that sort of categorization, one of resistance. However, Ranciere focuses on things from the point of view of artistic expression and interpretation rather than an explicit political foregrounding. He starts with the theater, and the idea of the need to split the fourth wall and break down the role of actor versus passive spectator via integrating—and demanding action and choice from—an audience as part of a theater experience. The question then becomes how to engage the spectator in a different manner in terms of how they view a work of art. Installations that draw forth a greater degree of participation from the spectator are a particular focus of the work. The desirability of this is argued in much the same terms as in A Thousand Plateaus in the sense of trying to find a way to live outside some strong countervailing current, cultural or otherwise. It’s part of the same strain of thought that yielded the idea of the existence of a “monoculture,” or the old “bread and circuses.” Or the co-optation of all forms of protest in music, art, etc, as part of a wider way for a predominant society to control the items that a spectator can consume, and amplify their power in the form of a “spectacle”. Imagine a situation where the same company that exploits labor overseas can use a theme song purchased from a music publishing company emphasizing the power of “being yourself” to sell things to people, one million of whom will all buy the same thing as a way of emphasizing their individualism. Now, imagine that the set of “companies” engaging in this behavior were to collude and package the idea of protest in the form of a “spectacle” that we can all watch while, outside, the concrete activities of the world remain the same—the people outside the manufactured “spectacle” remain on the street, homeless, perhaps addicted to a drug, perhaps suffering from grave illnesses, hidden in their worlds. But what if, in fact, even those who seem completely outside the system are, in fact, willfully made visible? The spectacle? Their meaning being to terrify people so everyone goes to work so they can purchase things that confirm their identity as truly caring about the poor, even those poor people who make all the things they buy, etc. It’s through this thought current that the relationship to resistance exists. But, I think, like most of these books, the problem is posed without a clear solution.
There are a wide variety of very memorable passages in the book. Ranciere provides very strong interpretations of Oliviero Toscani’s depiction of an anorexic woman walking away, from a poster that was put up through Milan as part of Milan’s Fashion Week. In this case, the intolerable image attempts to shatter the stranglehold of the predominant culture by using some of the same signs of what at the time was considered unquestionably desirable in fashion (being slender, whatever depredations a woman might put her body through) and demonstrating what that means in practice once the glitz is stripped away. In fact, what’s interesting there is that, while consciousness of this has grown in the way women are increasingly depicted in advertisements for clothes, the same consciousness remains further outside the mainstream in the realm of war and violent conflict. Directly after Ranciere’s description of the poster, he discusses at some length Martha Rosler’s “Bringing the War Home,” where he interrogates the idea that these photographs of dead children and war scenes in Vietnam being placed in the middle of homes and apartments has the desired effect. The question: Do we even have to really look at it? Does the image create a desire to become a spectator: “…it was supposed to open the eyes of those who enjoy this happiness to the intolerability of that reality and to their own complicity, in order to engage them in struggle. But the generation of this effect remained uncertain. The view of the dead child in the beautiful apartment… is certainly difficult to tolerate. But there is no particular reason why it should make those who see it conscious of the reality of imperialism and desirous of opposing it.” (p85). This is a core issue with the desire to drive activism: if someone is living comfortably, and the peril is distant, being visited on other people, the peril becomes part of a mass spectacle that is simply watched from afar, permitting those engaged in the atrocity to simply continue on as they are while trying to reframe the narrative to those who look away as a way of placating whatever minor or major ethical, religious, morality concerns exist among those who are unaffected.
Ranciere also explores artistic strategies that may work as a better way than an intolerable image that someone will be inclined to look away from… he also sees these strategies as a way to let the story about the atrocity tell itself, for when a spectator is overly sickened by something, perhaps the story becomes more about themselves, whether it’s about “what should I do?”, or “I want to turn from this.” He dedicates a lot of time to the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, who attempts to complicate or sever this sort of instantaneous consumption of the image with his works related to the Rwandan genocide by using words as a gateway to imagine the form an image that is hidden from sight will take: “Thus, the installation Real Pictures is composed of black boxes. Each of them contains an image of a murdered Tutsi, but the box is closed and the image invisible. The only thing that is visible is the text which describes the box’s concealed content. At first sight, therefore, these installations likewise oppose the testimony of words to proof by means of images… here the words are detached from any voice; they are themselves taken as visual elements.” (p94) By disturbing the “ordinary regime” of the connection between words and images, Jaar can step outside of the river of visual imagery stimuli that drowns us in a variety of images, from advertisements to television shows and anything else we see—any sort of commoditized communication or space in fact. To think about what the image means would also force oneself to live inside another’s experience more deeply.
So, if this is the problem, and these are the steps that are taken to attempt to circumvent it, there still remains questions about that “resistance” part of it, namely how would such a resistance to the regime of images and stimuli—and, thus, to various methods of passive control of which, passive as it is, we are unaware to a greater or lesser degree—would grow large enough to undermine an authoritarian regime of any sort in a way that effectuates change. This book provides extremely valuable and complementary insight into the depth of this element of the larger picture.
There are a wide variety of very memorable passages in the book. Ranciere provides very strong interpretations of Oliviero Toscani’s depiction of an anorexic woman walking away, from a poster that was put up through Milan as part of Milan’s Fashion Week. In this case, the intolerable image attempts to shatter the stranglehold of the predominant culture by using some of the same signs of what at the time was considered unquestionably desirable in fashion (being slender, whatever depredations a woman might put her body through) and demonstrating what that means in practice once the glitz is stripped away. In fact, what’s interesting there is that, while consciousness of this has grown in the way women are increasingly depicted in advertisements for clothes, the same consciousness remains further outside the mainstream in the realm of war and violent conflict. Directly after Ranciere’s description of the poster, he discusses at some length Martha Rosler’s “Bringing the War Home,” where he interrogates the idea that these photographs of dead children and war scenes in Vietnam being placed in the middle of homes and apartments has the desired effect. The question: Do we even have to really look at it? Does the image create a desire to become a spectator: “…it was supposed to open the eyes of those who enjoy this happiness to the intolerability of that reality and to their own complicity, in order to engage them in struggle. But the generation of this effect remained uncertain. The view of the dead child in the beautiful apartment… is certainly difficult to tolerate. But there is no particular reason why it should make those who see it conscious of the reality of imperialism and desirous of opposing it.” (p85). This is a core issue with the desire to drive activism: if someone is living comfortably, and the peril is distant, being visited on other people, the peril becomes part of a mass spectacle that is simply watched from afar, permitting those engaged in the atrocity to simply continue on as they are while trying to reframe the narrative to those who look away as a way of placating whatever minor or major ethical, religious, morality concerns exist among those who are unaffected.
Ranciere also explores artistic strategies that may work as a better way than an intolerable image that someone will be inclined to look away from… he also sees these strategies as a way to let the story about the atrocity tell itself, for when a spectator is overly sickened by something, perhaps the story becomes more about themselves, whether it’s about “what should I do?”, or “I want to turn from this.” He dedicates a lot of time to the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, who attempts to complicate or sever this sort of instantaneous consumption of the image with his works related to the Rwandan genocide by using words as a gateway to imagine the form an image that is hidden from sight will take: “Thus, the installation Real Pictures is composed of black boxes. Each of them contains an image of a murdered Tutsi, but the box is closed and the image invisible. The only thing that is visible is the text which describes the box’s concealed content. At first sight, therefore, these installations likewise oppose the testimony of words to proof by means of images… here the words are detached from any voice; they are themselves taken as visual elements.” (p94) By disturbing the “ordinary regime” of the connection between words and images, Jaar can step outside of the river of visual imagery stimuli that drowns us in a variety of images, from advertisements to television shows and anything else we see—any sort of commoditized communication or space in fact. To think about what the image means would also force oneself to live inside another’s experience more deeply.
So, if this is the problem, and these are the steps that are taken to attempt to circumvent it, there still remains questions about that “resistance” part of it, namely how would such a resistance to the regime of images and stimuli—and, thus, to various methods of passive control of which, passive as it is, we are unaware to a greater or lesser degree—would grow large enough to undermine an authoritarian regime of any sort in a way that effectuates change. This book provides extremely valuable and complementary insight into the depth of this element of the larger picture.
January 4, 2024
"Emancipation begins when we challenge the opposition between viewing and acting; when we understand that the self-evident facts that structure the relations between saying, seeing and doing themselves belong to the structure of domination and subjection. It begins when we understand that viewing is also an action that confirms or transforms this distribution of positions."
7/10
7/10
March 31, 2023
“The power of transformation of the banal into the impersonal, forged by literature, comes to hollow out the seeming obviousness, the seeming immediacy, of the photo from within. The pensiveness of the image is then the latent presence of one regime of expression in another.”
September 13, 2019
Gören, görmeyi bilmez. Seven, sevdiğini bilir.
November 19, 2023
Valente seca.
January 10, 2025
Five interesting and mostly unreadable essays (it is French). Convincing arguments against much trite political art, which he finds contributed to the postmodern turn against political imagery. This is bad news for those assemblages of juxtaposed capitalist objects I keep seeing at the gallery.
June 2, 2012
This is the first French language book I have finished in its entirety. I think in a way that's a sort of testament to its quality, that I was motivated through difficult sections and new vocabulary to continue reading. And to understand.
In terms of content, I think the most engaging sections are probably most derivative of his earlier work, in particular Le maître ignorant, (which I am currently reading), where he presents his arguments on emancipation through intellectual equality. This turns out to be fairly crucial to his attempt to free the position of the spectator from assumptions of passivity and inferiority. I admire what he attempts to do, even as parts of me resist and react to what he claims. This might be the mark of a good argument, in my eyes--something that challenges where I am most comfortable in my ideas, but in a way that I continue to feel the need to engage.
In all, I think this is a worthy read, and less difficult than some of his other works, notably Le partage du sensible.
Addendum: I saw him speak on the topics of this book and it was interesting to see how reluctant he was to accept any kind of authority of position, particularly in terms of drama (the talk was presented by a coalition of dramatists). Perhaps this is intellectual equality in practice? It made for an evasive presentation at times.
In terms of content, I think the most engaging sections are probably most derivative of his earlier work, in particular Le maître ignorant, (which I am currently reading), where he presents his arguments on emancipation through intellectual equality. This turns out to be fairly crucial to his attempt to free the position of the spectator from assumptions of passivity and inferiority. I admire what he attempts to do, even as parts of me resist and react to what he claims. This might be the mark of a good argument, in my eyes--something that challenges where I am most comfortable in my ideas, but in a way that I continue to feel the need to engage.
In all, I think this is a worthy read, and less difficult than some of his other works, notably Le partage du sensible.
Addendum: I saw him speak on the topics of this book and it was interesting to see how reluctant he was to accept any kind of authority of position, particularly in terms of drama (the talk was presented by a coalition of dramatists). Perhaps this is intellectual equality in practice? It made for an evasive presentation at times.
May 26, 2012
How I got on without Rancière this long, I'll never know.
"Emancipation begins when we challenge the opposition between viewing and acting; when we understand that the self-evidant facts that structure the relations between saying, seeing and doing themselves belong to the structure of domination and subjection."
"Emancipation begins when we challenge the opposition between viewing and acting; when we understand that the self-evidant facts that structure the relations between saying, seeing and doing themselves belong to the structure of domination and subjection."
December 31, 2020
L'analyse est passionnante mais il faut s'accrocher car certaines phrases sont ardues.
August 25, 2023
rancière writes this as some sort of a response to debord’s society of the spectacle in the light of today’s world.
he first starts with the concept of the emancipated spectator in the title essay, which all boils down to the central idea of action, which to act is to pull you out of the spectator role, and thus you’re emancipated. the second essay is which he argued against the old sort of critique against capitalism, from both right and left wing. he then pulls off the idea that people can think for themselves and so they can convey their arts and put in political messages and those of the people as to be representative, being apart and being together, what a nice slogan. in the final two essays he explores the intolerable image, which is a bit like sontag’s regarding the pain of others, but then going back to which witnessing and how image does it by duplicating reality, etc; he then writes about the pensive image which is about the term pensiveness, it’s the unthought thought in the images, for the spectators to decipher, which is followed by so many examples that i lost his voice in the words.
to put the puzzles together, it seems to pinpoint which the emancipated spectator would be todays spectators, that is everyone on earth. does this really relate so much to debord’s work on spectacle? my answer would be no. the depth in this book is not so political, its focal point is aiming at the artistic side of things, and therefore it isn’t social nor political. it also seems to ignore that the feedback loop of being an artist doesn’t necessarily mean participating in anything to say one isn’t the spectator. and by saying that one is a spectator, it admits the presence of a spectacle, which is the spectacle would still be a realm out of touch for the common people, or the proletariat. by only targeting at the arts, movies, theatres is insufficient for the claim. back onto the topic of the emancipated spectator, would one be truly “emancipated”, simply because one can have one’s voice in one’s artwork, or that by the community, or that via musing about a painting, a work? in marcuse’s one-dimensional man, he tackles the problem of how limited critical theory can be, and art as a commodity is an existing product of the system, it does not refute the system, nor one could be liberated in the leftist sense as one’s thoughts are still intact with the majority of the society. the mere increase in exposure to all those artistic resources does not guarantee liberation, the liberation only can be guaranteed by which one can think independently and critically, and that is not up to the society.
rancière’s reasoning is somehow hard to follow, but the central idea isn’t very amusing in his paragraphs. i welcome my arms to all leftists and post-marxists, and since i’ve got another of his book sitting there waiting for me to flip through, i would still read his works. in the emancipated spectator, it only features movies from the last century, and the photographs are new, as for the sake of community, and digitalised world which allow people to group together. it is somehow akin to one of the essays i read in the book Radiohead and Philosophy, it’s about how capitalism, because of the market, allow diverging ideas that are anti-capitalist to exist, and it was the case with Radiohead. putting this example into this book, it fits, but it doesn’t necessitate the emancipation, nor the band is the representation of the fans. the community works in a capitalist way, and by no means i’m sceptical about rancière’s knowledge in all these post-marxist theories, but it seems that left-wing positivism is no better than left-wing melancholia. by putting forth a book that is in such a uplifting tone about how people can be emancipated spectators, i think it is disappointing to feature so little of the modern spectacle, and not tackling the problem at heart, no better than even a rock band.
he first starts with the concept of the emancipated spectator in the title essay, which all boils down to the central idea of action, which to act is to pull you out of the spectator role, and thus you’re emancipated. the second essay is which he argued against the old sort of critique against capitalism, from both right and left wing. he then pulls off the idea that people can think for themselves and so they can convey their arts and put in political messages and those of the people as to be representative, being apart and being together, what a nice slogan. in the final two essays he explores the intolerable image, which is a bit like sontag’s regarding the pain of others, but then going back to which witnessing and how image does it by duplicating reality, etc; he then writes about the pensive image which is about the term pensiveness, it’s the unthought thought in the images, for the spectators to decipher, which is followed by so many examples that i lost his voice in the words.
to put the puzzles together, it seems to pinpoint which the emancipated spectator would be todays spectators, that is everyone on earth. does this really relate so much to debord’s work on spectacle? my answer would be no. the depth in this book is not so political, its focal point is aiming at the artistic side of things, and therefore it isn’t social nor political. it also seems to ignore that the feedback loop of being an artist doesn’t necessarily mean participating in anything to say one isn’t the spectator. and by saying that one is a spectator, it admits the presence of a spectacle, which is the spectacle would still be a realm out of touch for the common people, or the proletariat. by only targeting at the arts, movies, theatres is insufficient for the claim. back onto the topic of the emancipated spectator, would one be truly “emancipated”, simply because one can have one’s voice in one’s artwork, or that by the community, or that via musing about a painting, a work? in marcuse’s one-dimensional man, he tackles the problem of how limited critical theory can be, and art as a commodity is an existing product of the system, it does not refute the system, nor one could be liberated in the leftist sense as one’s thoughts are still intact with the majority of the society. the mere increase in exposure to all those artistic resources does not guarantee liberation, the liberation only can be guaranteed by which one can think independently and critically, and that is not up to the society.
rancière’s reasoning is somehow hard to follow, but the central idea isn’t very amusing in his paragraphs. i welcome my arms to all leftists and post-marxists, and since i’ve got another of his book sitting there waiting for me to flip through, i would still read his works. in the emancipated spectator, it only features movies from the last century, and the photographs are new, as for the sake of community, and digitalised world which allow people to group together. it is somehow akin to one of the essays i read in the book Radiohead and Philosophy, it’s about how capitalism, because of the market, allow diverging ideas that are anti-capitalist to exist, and it was the case with Radiohead. putting this example into this book, it fits, but it doesn’t necessitate the emancipation, nor the band is the representation of the fans. the community works in a capitalist way, and by no means i’m sceptical about rancière’s knowledge in all these post-marxist theories, but it seems that left-wing positivism is no better than left-wing melancholia. by putting forth a book that is in such a uplifting tone about how people can be emancipated spectators, i think it is disappointing to feature so little of the modern spectacle, and not tackling the problem at heart, no better than even a rock band.
November 13, 2021
In "The Ignorant Schoolmaster", Ranciere insists on the equality of human intelligences hiding beneath apparent inequalities. While he can't prove this equality, he uses this utopian hypothesis to break apart discourses on education relying on the inequality of the student-teacher relationship.
Similarly, in "The Emancipated Spectator", Ranciere is trying to break apart the pessimistic discourse associated to Debord's "Society of the Spectacle", which, in its most extreme form, views all images as capitalist lies designed to alienate people from immediacy and action. Although he discusses how this discourse affects social movements (the idea that all protest is immediately commoditized and co-opted by the powers-that-be), his main representatives of this "spectacular" discourse are in the realm of political artwork. Political art seeks to change the world, but in doing so it communicates only to people that it has turned into passive spectators.
How will Ranciere break apart this discourse? He insists on a "utopian" hypothesis: the spectators are not passive, art does have the ability to communicate, and this communication relies on the spectator's critical thinking. This hypothesis didn't actually seem terribly radical to me, but perhaps art criticism had entered a phase of extreme pessimism in a depoliticized world... It is true that society at large produces spectacles and distracts people from political action and thought (surely the success of Marvel movies is related to passive spectators and capitalist interests...), but why should all art and communication be impossible? Maybe all artistic creation is poisoned by the need to promote and sell it, but that doesn't render artistic communication impossible, just difficult, right? Maybe art alone won't change the world, by why should it have to shoulder this burden on its own?
Anyways, after the first few essays, he drops the theme of emancipation almost entirely and goes into pure art criticism, which I didn't much care for. I wish the book had made it more clear that it was just a collection of essays, and wouldn't get back to the emancipatory stuff.
Similarly, in "The Emancipated Spectator", Ranciere is trying to break apart the pessimistic discourse associated to Debord's "Society of the Spectacle", which, in its most extreme form, views all images as capitalist lies designed to alienate people from immediacy and action. Although he discusses how this discourse affects social movements (the idea that all protest is immediately commoditized and co-opted by the powers-that-be), his main representatives of this "spectacular" discourse are in the realm of political artwork. Political art seeks to change the world, but in doing so it communicates only to people that it has turned into passive spectators.
How will Ranciere break apart this discourse? He insists on a "utopian" hypothesis: the spectators are not passive, art does have the ability to communicate, and this communication relies on the spectator's critical thinking. This hypothesis didn't actually seem terribly radical to me, but perhaps art criticism had entered a phase of extreme pessimism in a depoliticized world... It is true that society at large produces spectacles and distracts people from political action and thought (surely the success of Marvel movies is related to passive spectators and capitalist interests...), but why should all art and communication be impossible? Maybe all artistic creation is poisoned by the need to promote and sell it, but that doesn't render artistic communication impossible, just difficult, right? Maybe art alone won't change the world, by why should it have to shoulder this burden on its own?
Anyways, after the first few essays, he drops the theme of emancipation almost entirely and goes into pure art criticism, which I didn't much care for. I wish the book had made it more clear that it was just a collection of essays, and wouldn't get back to the emancipatory stuff.
November 16, 2022
Perhaps 3 stars is a little harsh but some of the conclusions - that we should think unreasonable hypotheses about aesthetic possibilities to stop ourselves being trapped in impotence (okay but how??) or that we should refuse the distance between the knowledge of the art and the ignorance of the spectator (again, how, and what if the art is genuinely impossibly different to the spectator, e.g. do I refuse a distance when reading Fanon lol?) - remain somewhat unconvincing.
Still, despite occasional frustration I do think I got a lot out of this, particularly with the last 3 chapters. Refusing a lazy critique of spectacle or affirmation of our own impotence in the face of ideology is certainly refreshing, as is Rancière's conviction that art doesn't have to be political or inspirational in a directly Brechtian sense (I.e. inspire a specific response and view of the world) - rather it reframes the possibilities and regimes of sense/reception (I liked his examples of working class correspondence here - the worker can be a philosopher/bourgeois dreamer through literature). His ideas of the intolerability and pensiveness of images are also productive - not a classical idea of mimesis, nor the romantic tragedy of a break between artistic representation and sense, but rather a "pensiveness" belying the multiple regimes of art working at once in a given image in heterogeneous ways (poetry vs narrative in Kiarostomi etc).
Still, despite occasional frustration I do think I got a lot out of this, particularly with the last 3 chapters. Refusing a lazy critique of spectacle or affirmation of our own impotence in the face of ideology is certainly refreshing, as is Rancière's conviction that art doesn't have to be political or inspirational in a directly Brechtian sense (I.e. inspire a specific response and view of the world) - rather it reframes the possibilities and regimes of sense/reception (I liked his examples of working class correspondence here - the worker can be a philosopher/bourgeois dreamer through literature). His ideas of the intolerability and pensiveness of images are also productive - not a classical idea of mimesis, nor the romantic tragedy of a break between artistic representation and sense, but rather a "pensiveness" belying the multiple regimes of art working at once in a given image in heterogeneous ways (poetry vs narrative in Kiarostomi etc).
Images of art do not supply weapons for battles. They help sketch new configurations of what can be seen... on the condition that their meaning or effect is not anticipatedDoes this offer a way out from the "cyclical self-criticism" of left-wing critiques of spectacle? I'm not entirely sure (it's all a bit too vague for me ultimately?) but it's certainly got something...
May 10, 2024
"Aesthetic experience has a political effect to the extend that the loss of destination it presupposes disrupts the way in which bodies fit their functions and destinations. What it produces is not rhetorical persuasion about what must be done. Nor is it the framing of a collective body. It is a multiplication of connections and disconnections that reframe the relation between bodies, the world they live in and the way in which they are 'equipped' to adapt to it. It is a multiplicity of folds and gaps in the fabric of common experience that change the cartography of the perceptible, the thinkable, and the feasible. As such, it allows for new modes of political construction of common objects and new possibilities of collective enunciation" (72).
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March 1, 2018Parhaan tietämäni jäsennyksen Rancièren estetiikka ja politiikka -hullunmyllylle on tehnyt Stewart Martin. Tässä erinomaisessa arviossa käydään läpi myös Badioun inestetiikka.
"What is required is a philosophy that is capable of thinking the relationship of emancipatory politics to developed capitalist economies. This must surely be the point of departure for any philosophy of art today. It is sobering to recognize how few contemporary philosophical enterprises even attempt this."
S. Martin, "Culs-de-sac", Radical Philosophy #131 (May/Jun 2005).
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/rev...
"What is required is a philosophy that is capable of thinking the relationship of emancipatory politics to developed capitalist economies. This must surely be the point of departure for any philosophy of art today. It is sobering to recognize how few contemporary philosophical enterprises even attempt this."
S. Martin, "Culs-de-sac", Radical Philosophy #131 (May/Jun 2005).
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/rev...
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August 31, 2019Dünyayı kavrayış sistemi ve bu sistemin teşvik edeceği varsayılan politik seferberlik biçimleri sanatı ayakta tutacak kadar güçlüyken, eleştirel sanatın amaçlarıyla gerçek etkileme biçimleri arasındaki mesafeyi görmezden gelmek mümkündü. Bu sistem apaçıklığını, bu biçimler de güçlerini yitirdiğinden beriyse artık bu mesafe apaçık ortada duruyor. Eleştirel söylemin bir arada tuttuğu "heterojen" öğeler, aslında mevcut yorum şemalarıyla birbirine bağlanmıştı. Eleştirel sanat icrası, uyuşmazlık dünyasının apaçıklığından besleniyordu. O halde şu soruyu sormamız mümkün: Bu uyuşmazlık
evreni apaçıklığını kaybettiği zaman eleştirel sanata ne olur? Bu
evreni apaçıklığını kaybettiği zaman eleştirel sanata ne olur? Bu
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