Aesthetics and Its Discontents

by Jacques Rancière

Translated by Steven Corcoran Only yesterday aesthetics stood accused of concealing cultural games of social distinction. Now it is considered a parasitic discourse from which artistic practices must be freed. But aesthetics is not a discourse. It is an historical regime of the identification of art. This regime is paradoxical, because it founds the autonomy of art only at the price of suppressing the boundaries separating its practices and its objects from those of everyday life and of making free aesthetic play into the promise of a new revolution. Aesthetics is not a politics by accident but in essence. But this politics operates in the unresolved tension between two opposed forms of politics: the first consists in transforming art into forms of collective life, the second in preserving from all forms of militant or commercial compromise the autonomy that makes it a promise of emancipation. This constitutive tension sheds light on the paradoxes and transformations of critical art. It also makes it possible to understand why today?s calls to free art from aesthetics are misguided and lead to a smothering of both aesthetics and politics in ethics.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Theory, France, French Literature, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2004

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

[Kalliope]

OMG, my Avatar is on the cover of this book.....!!!!!

I will have to get it!!!!

[Egor xS · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is programmatic--I advise everyone to read it. It resolutely hammers out the autonomy/dissolution issue. And for that, Ranciere flips through several centuries of aesthetics, making everything clean and maximally lucid. He deserves his fame and all the citations

[Ece · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve been reading this book for too long. At some point I had to finish it. I can’t say this was a smooth sail, lots of parts that are way too gritty, made me feel like I was trying to decode a language I don’t know. A short but hard read. Thankfully not all his books are like this. Regardless, I’m glad to have finished this one as it had valuable ideas in it that gave me insight, opened some doors.

[宗儒 李 · Rating 4 out of 5]

挺有見地 不錯

[Iris Shu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read intro+ch1 for class. Very lucid cogent and compelling. Sometimes u will not understand, but Jacques will help u understand.

[Alejandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aussi connu comme malaise dans ma thése :(

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://astudentofenglish.blogspot.com...

[Holly Mountain · Rating 4 out of 5]

This philosopher always appeals