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Reviewed by:
  • Jacques Rancière: Key Concepts
  • Nick Hewlett
Jacques Rancière: Key Concepts. Edited by Jean-Philippe Deranty. Durham: Acumen, 2010. xii + 207 pp.

Jacques Rancière has gained a substantial readership and considerable reputation over the past decade, and is now influential in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, politics, history, film theory, aesthetics, and beyond. Enthusiasm for his work (along with that of Badiou in particular) seems to indicate a moving on from the post-structuralist moment and a renewal of interest in theory that has egalitarian politics at its heart. While this book does not, of course, constitute a substitute for reading Rancière's own texts, it forms an excellent introductory complement. The volume is organized thematically, starting with philosophy and moving on to politics, poetics, and aesthetics, a sequence that broadly follows the chronological order of the major preoccupations of Rancière's own writing career. All the important developments are here: from Rancière's break with Althusserian Marxism to his recent, overriding preoccupation with the politics of aesthetics, via, for example, a fascination with pedagogy, which takes equality of intelligence as a starting point, the role of 'the poor' in various left-wing thinkers' systems, the [End Page 583] notion of 'police' to describe the status quo, and positive portrayal of mésentente (usually translated as 'disagreement') as a way of exploring emancipation. Rancière's work is explored in twelve substantive chapters, in addition to an introductory chapter and an Afterword, both written by the editor, Jean-Philippe Deranty. Deranty summarizes the book well in the Afterword when he suggests that Rancière's 'journey in radical equality' involves the following themes: a 'distinctive conceptualization of equality and freedom, his humanistic concern, his hermeneutic approach and his materialism' (p. 183). Indeed, there is particular emphasis on Rancière's almost unique and certainly consistent position that all human beings are equal and that this should underpin the development of any theory and any other serious analysis. My only (minor) reservation regarding the book is that it gives little indication of the various criticisms that have been expressed about Rancière's work, including the objection that, if a presumption of equality is asserted, where does this leave the very real existing and on-going material inequalities between different sectors of populations, as well as other less tangible inequalities such as access to education, for example. In other words, doesn't Rancière's approach offer less practical critical bite than some of the systems of thought he explicitly or implicitly criticizes? The book is, then, a very useful addition to the Acumen series on various thinkers, including Adorno, Badiou, Deleuze, and Wittgenstein.

Nick Hewlett
University of Warwick
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