Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics

by Jacques Rancière, Steven Corcoran (Translator)

Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics brings together some of Jacques Rancière's most recent writings on art and politics to show the critical potential of two of his most important concepts: the aesthetics of politics and the politics of aesthetics.

In this fascinating collection, Rancière engages in a radical critique of some of his major contemporaries on questions of art and politics: Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Jacques Derrida. The essays show how Rancière's ideas can be used to analyse contemporary trends in both art and politics, including the events surrounding 9/11, war in the contemporary consensual age, and the ethical turn of aesthetics and politics. Rancière elaborates new directions for the concepts of politics and communism, as well as the notion of what a 'politics of art' might be. This important collection includes several essays that have never previously been published in English, as well as a brand new afterword. Together these essays serve as a superb introduction to the work of one of the world's most influential contemporary thinkers.

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

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

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

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ranciere's political thought is really unique, like nothing I've read before. He introduces a distinction between politics (a space of dissensus) and the police (a space of consensus). His argument is premissed on the turn from political concerns to ethical concerns in the way power is exercised in today's world. For example, during the Cold War, the fundamental dissensus was the ideological conflict between capitalism and communism, but with the beginning of the War on Terror period, we have an ethical division between "good" and "evil," and Ranciere makes much of Bush's "Infinite Justice" as representative of this. And he argues that as a result of the shift to ethics we have created police consensus where one cannot deviate from the side of "good." Of course his argument is more complex and nuanced than that, but in broad brush strokes I think this is fairly accurate.

Ranciere also has a big section on Aesthetics, but I don't feel I got as much out of that portion because I'm not very familiar with aesthetic theory.

[Ulises]

de Rancière he aprendido que destrás de toda elección estética, hay una ideología para perseguir.
ese es el compromiso de los espacios de arte: la política de la estética.

[Sencer Turunç · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sanat, her şeyden önce, bir müşterek dünyada ikamet tarzıdır. Kendisine açık olmayan bir düşünceyi kendisine direnen bir tarzda ifade ettiği sürece; bir inanç ve yaşam tarzı olduğu sürece canlıdır.

Sanatın estetik rejiminde hiçbir şey temsil edilemez değildir.

Estetik sanat, imkansız bir politik başarıdır; müphem bir ilerlemedir; politik vaadini yerine getirmek isteyeni melankolik bir mefhuma kapatır.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

What to make of Ranciere? He falls in a long line of extremely abstract French thought. On a very general level, he provides some interesting insights in conceptualizing the concept of the police as a sort of regimented array of the sensible that extends the concept into a very broad term. His critique of political art, which doesn't necessarily lead to action and can often descend into a parody of critique , is in part insightful. Perhaps his most relevant observation is the way in which the aesthetic plays into his notion of the political, which creates a dissensus between different symbolic orders. He also makes a good point of how political resistance and aesthetic resistance must remain on different registers altogether.

On a another level, much of what he writes strikes one as using grandiose verbiage in making some fairly obvious points. Ultimately, Ranciere is indebted to the modernist tradition, which his own wordy writing ascends to but never reaches. He prioritizes non-mimetic art in problematic ways, has rather formalistic notions of how art operates--divested from context, holds a penchant for the counter-intuitive over the obvious. In other words, his concepts loftily escape the orbit of reality often-- not that this makes them irrelevant. But if you want any use from Ranciere, it requires re-tethering his concepts with the actual practices how how art and politics actually functions.

[Albemarle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found certain chapters indispensable while others far too difficult for me to follow. In those difficult chapters I failed to comprehend the reasoning behind his assumptions. However, this was a vital book, in parts, for me, both for my upcoming book “A Moment Inevitable” and my seminars. There were important points made, such as: “Art thus becomes a testimony to this immemorial dependence of the spirit as regards the Other. Fraternal utopia becomes a mere avatar of the dream of emancipation that was born in the times of the Enlightenment, the dream of a mind that is master of itself and its world, free of the power of the Other. For Lyotard this dream of a humanity that is master of itself is not only naïve, it is criminal. The accomplishment of this dream, he claims, results in the Nazi genocide.”

[Miriam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very difficult book. I don't know if it is because Rancière is French that I find it difficult to follow his trail of thought or that I'm just too tired, but it nevertheless made this horrible process of meeting my deadline a lot more agonising. He sure has some refreshing thoughts to add to the aesthetic experience debate, but I suggest you try to read every sentence multiple times to be able to properly appreciate his writings. May patience be with you!

[Martín Córdova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Se hace querer con el tiempo. Más lúcido que otros autores de la constelación posfundacionalista, eso sí.

[Kyle]

Having only read the article on human rights contra Arendt contained in this collection, Ranciere is doing something intriguing with politics. Retaining Arendt's notion of politics as a process or action while dismissing the notion that there are barriers to being able to act is really intriguing. I'm curious to see if the rest of his thought on politics could be described as Arendtian to a degree. Having read this alongside Arendt's material, colleagues wanted to conflate his critique of Arendt with her ideas of politics in order to claim that he endorses what he intends to critique. However, to say that is a mistake insofar as Ranciere recognizes being marginalized in a way which Arendt would simply brush off, describe as unpolitical or say that it can be overcome through performativity. The latter option makes Ranciere's work comparable to the Labor Movement chapter in The Human Condition yet as a whole her politics can't account for this or is directly opposed to, in some cases, what Ranciere is describing.

[Ian O'Loughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In this way, it is possible to define a certain dissensual practice of philosophy as an activity of de-classification that undermines all policing of domains and formulas. It does so not for the sole pleasure of deconstructing the master's discourse, but in order to think the lines according to which boundaries and passages are constructed, according to which they are conceivable and modifiable. This critical practice of philosophy is an inseparably egalitarian, or anarchistic, practice, since it considers arguments, narratives, testimonies, investigations and metaphors all as the equal inventions of a common capacity in a common language. Engaging in critique of the instituted divisions, then, paves the way for renewing our interrogations into what we are able to think and to do."

[Gianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredibly important read not only if you're an artist but equally if you're engaged with a what aesthetics is

[Lucrecia Labarthe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me sorprendió este libro de Ranciere. Es excelente y una de las mejores reflexiones sobre la igualdad humana que leí.