Dissensus: On Politics and AestheticsDissensus: 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. |
Contents
Editors Introduction | 1 |
Part I The Aesthetics of Politics | 25 |
CHAPTER ONE Ten Theses on Politics | 27 |
CHAPTER TWO Does Democracy Mean Something? | 45 |
CHAPTER THREE Who Is the Subject of the Rights of Man? | 62 |
From Actuality to Inactuality | 76 |
CHAPTER FIVE The People or the Multitudes? | 84 |
CHAPTER SIX Biopolitics or Politics? | 91 |
CHAPTER NINE The Aesthetic Revolution and Its Outcomes | 115 |
CHAPTER TEN The Paradoxes of Political Art | 134 |
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Politics of Literature | 152 |
CHAPTER TWELVE The Monument and Its Confidences or Deleuze and Arts Capacity of Resistance | 169 |
CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Ethical Turn of Aesthetics and Politics | 184 |
Part III Response to Critics | 203 |
CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Use of Distinctions | 205 |
Notes | 219 |