Quarreling with Rancière: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Democratic Disruption

This article contests Jacques Rancière’s disinclination to theorize the gendered, sexual, racial, colonial, and other fields of power that dramatically shape contemporary possibilities for democratic disruptions. Drawing on Samuel Chamber’s book The Lessons of Rancière (2013), I sketch out Rancière’s account of democratic politics as dissensus, conflict, and rupture by particularly emphasizing his compelling notion of democratic quarreling and use it to illuminate disruptive practices within the U.S. civil and welfare rights movements. As valuable and productive as Rancière’s ideas are, I nonetheless argue that his reluctance to heed the lessons offered by critical race scholars, postcolonial critics, feminists, and others about how histories of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and colonialism influence who remains uncounted or miscounted perpetuates the all-too-common tendency of Western theorizing from an unacknowledged center. I conclude with reflections on the politics of polemicizing and Rancière’s recent elevation within the worlds of political philosophy and political theory.