The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (review)

The publication of The Politics of Aesthetics is certainly a great editorial feat, for which the translator should be highly praised. Gabriel Rockhill has provided the English–speaking reader with a rigorous and graceful translation of Le partage du sensible: Politique et esthétique, a book which contains some of the most interesting essays by Jacques Rancière. But there is much more to this book than the translation of the original text: the English volume comes with a thorough introduction, added footnotes, an index of names, an extensive and precise "glossary of technical terms," and the most complete critical bibliography of Rancière's works that has ever been printed, either in French or in English. The critical apparatus for The Politics of Aesthetics is therefore an extremely useful tool for anybody interested in the work of Jacques Rancière. The interest of this volume is also enhanced by two original texts added to the English edition: an interview with Jacques Rancière conducted by Gabriel Rockhill himself and a thoughtful afterword by Slavoj izek.

The academic world, in the United States and in Anglophone countries in general, has been increasingly interested in the work of Jacques Rancière, as several of his books and essays dating from the 80s and the 90s have been slowly translated into English during the last 15 years. Rancière finds his place among a few French philosophers who, for quite some time, have been trying to re–vitalize the philosophical discourse of the Left. In this respect, he can be associated, even though cautiously, with other figures belonging to his same generation: Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, who all share with Rancière many philosophical, political and aesthetical concerns, together with slightly older thinkers, mainly Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.

A recently retired professor of aesthetics and politics at Paris–VIII, Jacques Rancière started his career as a student and collaborator of Louis Althusser, contributing one essay to a true classic of French Marxist scholarship, Lire le Capital (1965). During the events of May '68, Rancière was shortly involved with Maoist circles and slowly started to elaborate a thorough critique of Althusser's theory of ideology and political allegiance to the French Communist party. The process of separation from "structuralist Marxism" ended in the publication of La Leçon d'Althusser (1974), and Rancière embarked in a profoundly original philo-sophical journey, which started with a very peculiar kind of archival research. In order to counter Althusser's definition of ideological domination, which left very little space to the notions of freedom and equality, Rancière went looking for instances of actual and autonomous expression by the lower classes, exploring the journals published in the mid–19^th century by anarchist and socialist French workers. During the 1980s, this archival research resulted in the elaboration in the most original and powerful themes of Rancière's philosophical and political discourse. Studying the poems, the political interventions and the essays by these French workers, and also by women–activists like Jeanne Deroin, Rancière reflected on the political value of the equality of intelligence that manifests itself in the acquisition and the use of human language. This absolute equality is, in theory, at the basis of any political ordering, but it only realizes itself fully when the lower classes actually decide to claim it through writing, artistic expression or political interventions. This affirmation is always fragile, and occurs only intermittently in the historical arena, but it is the only act that can introduce true politics in an order generally dominated by the simple policing implemented by the powers in place. Three works, which are still considered by many the finest examples of Rancière's prose, are particularly representative of this period: Les nuits des prolètaires (1981, The Nights of Labor, 1989), Le philosophe et ses pauvres (1983, The Philosopher and His...