aesthetic regime of art

aesthetic revolution

aesthetic unconscious

aesthetics

community of equals

consensus

democracy

demos

dissensus

emancipation

equality

exclusion by homage

hegemony

ignorant schoolmaster

intelligence

ochlos

para-politics

people

poetics of knowledge

police

political

political dispute

political philosophy

political subject

politics

post-democracy

proletariat

regime of art

representative regime of art

silent speech

stultification

subjectivization

surface of design

topological analysis

writing

wrong

nationality

French

occupation / innovator as

philosopher

social theorist

innovator in the field of

marxism

philosophy

political aesthetics

political theory

university teacher

literary critic

is the system of genres, the hierarchy of the representative regime of art, isolates art in the singular (a paradoxical unity of logos and pathos).

Although traces of this regime are already to be found in such authors as Vico and Cervantes, it has only come to play a dominant role in the last two centuries. The aesthetic regime abolishes the hierar chical distribution ofthe sensible characteristic of the representative regime of art, including the privilege of speech over visibility as well as the hierarchy of the arts, their subject matter, and their genres. By promoting the equality of represented subjects, the indifference of style with regard to content, and the immanence of meaning in things themselves, the aesthetic regime destroys the system of genres and isolates 'art' in the singular, which it identifies with the paradoxical unity of opposites: logos and pathos. However, the singularity of art enters into an interminable contradiction due to the fact that the aesthetic regime also calls into question the very distinction between art and other activities. Strictly speaking, the egalitarian regime of the sensible can only isolate arts specificity at the expense of losing it.' (Ranciere 2000: 81) Ranciere, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is an early 19th century transition from the representative regime of art in the name of the aesthetic regime.

By calling into question the representative regime of art in the name of the aesthetic regime around the beginning of the nineteenth century, this 'silent revolution' transformed an organized set of relation ships between the visible and the invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible, knowledge and action, activity and passivity. The aesthetic revolution in the sensible order did not, however, lead to the death of the representative regime. On the contrary, it introduced an irresolvable contradiction between diverse elements of the representative and aesthetic regimes of art.' (Rancière 2000: 82) Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is a conjunction of competing conceptions of the unconscious which1 represent meaning on the one hand as decipherable (like language) and on the other, indecipherable (like silence).

Coextensive with the aesthetic regime of art, the aesthetic unconscious is paradoxically polarized between the two extremes that characterize silent speech. On the one hand, meaning is inscribed like hieroglyphics on the body of things and waits to be deciphered. On the other hand, an unfathomable silence that no voice can adequately render acts as an insurmountable obstacle to signification and meaning. This contradictory conjunction between speech and silence, logos and pathos, is not equivalent to the Freudian unconscious or other later interpretations. It is, in fact, the historical terrain upon which competing conceptions of the unconscious have emerged' (Rancière 2000: 82). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is not just about art, but more broadly it involves how action, production, perception, and thought determine what can take shape as 'sensible'.

In its restricted sense, aesthetics refers neither to art theory in general nor to the discipline that takes art as its object of study. Aesthetics is properly speaking a specific regime for identifying and thinking the arts that Rancière names the aesthetic regime of art. In its broad sense, however, aesthetics refers to the distribution of the sensible that determines a mode of articulation between forms of action, production, perception, and thought. This general definition extends aesthetics beyond the strict realm of art to include the conceptual coordinates and modes of visibility operative in the political domain. ' (Rancière 2000: 82).

is a presupposition that community is in constant need of verification rather than requiring a goal to be attained.

A community of equals is not a goal to be attained but rather a presupposition that is in constant need of verification, a presupposition that can never in fact lead to the establishment of an egalitarian social formation since the logic of inequality is inherent in the social bond. A community of equals is therefore a precarious community that implements equality in intermittent acts of emancipation.' (Rancière 2000: 83). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is the troubling presupposition that every part of a population and all of its problems can be incorporated into single a political order and taken into account.

Prior to being a platform for rational debate, consensus is a specific regime of the sensible, a particular way of positing rights as a community's arche. More specifically, consensus is the presupposition according to which every part of a population, along with all of its specific problems, can be incorporated into a political order and taken into account. By abolishing dissensus and placing a ban on political subjectivization, consensus reduces politics to the police.' (Rancière 2000: 83). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is neither a form of government nor a style of social life, but an act which disturbs the political order by calling into question its very coordinates of perception, thought, and action.

AN ACT OF a 'Neither a form of government nor a style of social life, democracy is properly speaking an act of political subjectivization that disturbs the police order by polemically calling into question the aesthetic coordinates of perception, thought, and action. Democracy is thus falsely identified when it is associated with the consensual self-regulation of the multitude or with the reign of a sovereign collectivity based on subordinating the particular to the universal. It is, in fact, less a state of being than an act of contention that implements various forms of dissensus. It can be said to exist only when those who have no title to power, the d èm os, intervene as the dividing force that disrupts the ochlos. If a community can be referred to as democratic, it is only insofar as it is a 'community of sharing' (communaute du partage) in which membership in a common world not to be confused with a communitarian social formation is expressed in adversarial terms and coalition only occurs in conflict' (Rancière 2000: 83-4). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is simultaneously the name of a community and the title signifying the division of a community due to a wrong.

Rancière uses this Greek term meaning 'the commons', 'plebeians', or 'citizens' interchangeably with 'the people' to refer to those who have no share in the communal distribution of the sensible. The dèmos is thus simultaneously the name of a community and the title signifying the division of a community due to a wrong. It is the unique power of assembling and dividing that exceeds all of the arrangements made by legislators... it is the force of commu' (Rancière 2000: 84). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is a fundamental discord resulting from conflicts over the distribution of the sensible.

Prior to linguistic or cultural misunderstanding, Rancière isolates a fundamental discord that results from conflicts over the distribution of the sensible. Whereas la meconnaissance (lack of comprehension) and le malentendu (misunderstanding) produce obstacles to litigation that are at least in theory surmountable, la mesentente is a conflict over what is meant by 'to speak' and 'to understand' as well as over the horizons of perception that distinguish the audible from the inaudible, the comprehensible from the incomprehensible, the visible from the invisible. A case of disagreement arises when the perennial persistence of a wrong enters into conflict with the established police order and resist the forms of juridical litigation that are imposed on it' (Rancière 2000: 85). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is not the end of a political project nor a state of social liberation, but a process involving the always precarious and always intermittent challenge to the status quo.

Neither the teleological end of a political project nor a state of social liberation, the process of emancipation consist in the polemical verification of equality. Since this verification is necessarily intermittent and precarious, the logic of emancipation is in fact a heterology, i.e. the introduction of a proper-improper' that challenges the police order..' (Rancière 2000: 86).

is a presupposition, an initial axiom or it is nothing.

Equality is a presupposition, an initial axiom or it is nothing. (223)

is fundamental and yet absent, current and yet untimely. It is by definition a kind of trangressiveness.

Equality is fundamental and absent, current and untimely. . . the transgressive appropriation of an intellectual equality whose privilege others had reserved for themselves. (223)

is not defined in terms of the equitable distribution of rights and representation, but in acts that undo the supposedly natural order of the sensible.

Although it is the only universal axiom of politics, equality nonetheless remains undetermined in its content and lacks an a priori foundation. It is, strictly speaking, the presupposition discernible in the polemical reconfigurations of the police distribution of the sensible. In other words, Rancière's conception of equality must not be confused with the arithmetical distribution of rights and representation. The essence of equality is not to be found in an equitable unification of interests but in the acts of subjectivization that undo the supposedly natural order of the sensible. By treating a wrong, political subjects transform the aesthetic coordinates of the community in order to implement the only universal in politics: we are all equal' (Rancière 2000: 86). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York.

is the privileged mode of representation by which the image of 'social concensus' is delivered to the members of a social.

Rancikre defines hegemony as 'the privileged mode of representation by which the image of the social concensus is offered to the members of a social

is not an ignorant person who is thrilled by playing teacher. It is a teacher who teaches that is to say who is for another a means of knowledge without transmitting any knowledge.

And there is a second level to the question, a second sense of the expression 'ignorant schoolmaster': An ignorant schoolmaster is not an ignorant person who is thrilled by playing teacher. It is a teacher who teaches that is to say who is for another a means of knowledge without transmitting any knowledge. (Ranciere in Biesta 2010:2)

1s 2quality is not something to be proved, but rather concerns seeing what can be done under that supposition.

However, the self-emancipating agents might say, 'our problem isn't proving that all intelligence is equal. It is seeing what can be done under that supposition' (ibid.). T (deranty, 2010:33)

is a throng or community obsessed with its own unification at the expense of excluding the people.

Rancière uses this Greek term meaning a throng of people' or 'the multitude' to refer to a community obsessed with its own unification, at the expense of excluding the dèmos.' (Rancière 2000: 88). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is one of the three forms of political philosophy. It attempts the impossible of integrating the anarchy of democracy into the constitutional order.

One of the three kinds of political philosophy, para-politics is the result of Aristotle's attempt to square the circle by integrating the egalitarian anarchy of the dèmos into the constitutional order of the police. This mimetic transformation of the dèmos into one of the parties of political litigation, as natural as it may seem to modern theories of sovereignty and the para-political tradition of social contract theory, masks the fact that the equality of the dèmos can never be adequately accounted for within the police order.' (Rancière 2000: 88). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York

is the unaccounted within the system that disclose a wrong and demand a shift in the sensible order of things.

This term is not used as a social, economic, political, or ontological category referring to an identifiable group or a pre-constituted collectivity. The 'people' are the political subjects of democracy that supplement the police account of the population and displace the established categories of identification. They are the unaccounted for within the police order, the political subjects that disclose a wrong and demand a redistribution of the sensible order' (Rancière 2000: 88).

is the literary procedures through which forms of knowledge establish themselves as scientific discourses.

The study of the literary procedures by which a particular form of knowledge establishes itself as a scientific discourse (as was the case, in the nineteenth century, with sociology, history, and political science' (Rancière 2000: 88-9). Rancière, Jacques. 2000. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Continuum: New York.

Jacques Ranciere

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Jacques Ranciere