Review
"Ranciere's writings offer one of the few consistent conceptualizations of how we are to continue to resist." - Slavoj Zizek"
Product Description
It is frequently said that we are living through the end of politics, the end of social upheavals, the end of utopian folly. Consensualrealism is the order of the day. But political realists, remarksJacques Ranciere, are always several steps behind reality, and the onlything which may come to an end with their dominance is democracy. 'Wecould', he suggests, 'merely smile at the duplicity of theconclusion/suppression of politics which is simultaneously asuppression/conclusion of philosophy.' This is precisely the task whichRanciere undertakes in these subtle and perceptive essays. He arguespersuasively that since Plato and Aristotle politics has alwaysconstructed itself as the art of ending politics, that realism isitself utopian, and that what has succeeded the polemical forms ofclass struggle is not the wisdom of a new millennium but the return ofold fears, criminality and chaos. Whether he is discussing theconfrontation between Mitterrand and Chirac, French working-classdiscourse after the 1830 revolution, or the ideology of recent studentmobilizations, his aim is to restore philosophy to politics and givepolitics back its original and necessary meaning: the organization ofdissent.
About the Author
Jacques Raciere is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. His books include The Politics of Aesthetics, Short Voyages to the Land of the People and The Nights of Labor. His Hatred of Democracy is forthcoming from Verso.
