For Those Who Disagree – Rancière and the Sublime

Sublime Art ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 202-240
Author(s):  
Stephen Zepke
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Philosophy Department ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
The One ◽  
Negative Sense ◽  
The Way

The work of Jacques Rancière is concerned with the sublime, but in a negative sense. He hates it. And as well, he hates the way thinkers such as Deleuze and Lyotard (and in fact them in particular, his colleagues in the Philosophy department at Paris VIII) have constructed both an aesthetics and an ethics from it. And as well, how this sublime aesthetics draws upon a politics (which is also an ontology) of otherness. In fact, he is even going to accuse Derrida of this, although without roilling him up with the problems of the sublime. So Rancière is going to be very useful to us as a critical reflection on those who have gone before, but as well he will because he is the one who speaks most about contemporary art. But his place here is not entirely negative, despite his constant and methodological disagreements. Rancière also offers an aesthetics based upon Kant’s Third Critique, but one that begins from the beautiful rather than the sublime. This will be a useful addition to the aesthetics we have already examined that emerge from Kant’s work, and another possible way to understand its political possibilities.

scholarly journals ‘Dark tourism’ and the ‘kitschification’ of 9/11

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 232-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey J Potts
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Ground Zero ◽  
Tourist Destination ◽  
Dark Tourism ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Commodity Culture ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
The Way

This article aims to interrogate the framing of New York’s Ground Zero as a ‘dark tourist’ destination, with particular reference to the entanglement of notions of kitsch in academic discussions of the events of 11 September 2001. What makes Ground Zero contentious, even scandalous, for many scholars is the presence of a conspicuous commodity culture around the site in the form of tourist souvenirs, leading to accusations of kitschification of memory and the constitution of visitors as ‘tourists of history’. Drawing upon theoretical ideas of Jacques Rancière, Bruno Latour and W. J. T. Mitchell around image politics, the alignment of kitsch with the figure of the tourist will be questioned, along with the conviction that the so-called teddy-bearification of 9/11 threatens the formation of dangerous political subjectivities. In attempting to rid the debates of their default settings, and reliance on essentialist notions of kitsch, it is hoped that that the way will be cleared for the sociological, ethnographic and empirical work necessary to consider the cultural and political significance of the Ground Zero souvenir economy.

A Breathing Space for Aesthetics and Politics: An Introduction to Jacques Rancière

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 5-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikos Papastergiadis
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Political ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Alain Badiou ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Creative Transformation ◽  
Breathing Space ◽  
Jacques Rancière

Jacques Rancière is one of the central figures in the contemporary debates on aesthetics and politics. This introduction maps the shift of focus in Rancière’s writing from political theory to contemporary art practice and also traces the enduring interest in ideas on equality and creativity. It situates Rancière’s rich body of writing in relation to key theorists such as the philosopher Alain Badiou, art historian Terry Smith and anthropologist George E. Marcus. I argue that Rancière offers a distinctive approach in this broad field by clarifying the specificity of the artist’s task in the production of critical and creative transformation, or what he calls the ‘distribution of the sensible’. In conclusion, I complement Rancière’s invocation to break out of the oppositional paradigm in which the political and aesthetic are usually confined by outlining some further methodological techniques for addressing contemporary art.

scholarly journals Skopje: Time, Narrative, and Politics

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
Drew S. Burk
Keyword(s):  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
Flow Of Time ◽  
The Common ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge ◽  
Common World ◽  
The Way

I would like to recall several ideas that have supported the entirety of my work for the past 40 years: forms of worker emancipation and the regimes of the identification of art; the transformations of literary fiction and the principles of democracy; the presuppositions of historical science and the forms of consensus by today’s dominant apparatuses. What unites all these areas of research is the attention to the way in which these practices and forms of knowledge imply a certain cartography of the common world. I have chosen to name this system of relations between ways of being, doing, seeing, and thinking that determine at once the common world and the ways in which everyone takes part within it the “distribution of the sensible.” But it must also be said that temporal categories play an important role in this as well. By defining a now, a before and an after, and in connecting them together within the narrative, they predetermine the way in which the common world is given to us in order to perceive it and to think it as well as the place given to everyone who occupies it and the capacity by which each of us then has to perceive truth. The narrative of time at once states what the flow of time makes possible as well as the way in which the inhabitants of time can grasp (or not grasp) these “possibles.” This articulation is a fiction. In this sense, politics and forms of knowledge are established by way of fictions including as well works that are deemed to be of the imagination. And the narrative of time is at the heart of these fictions that structure the intelligibility of these situations, which is to say as well, their acceptability. The narrative of time is always at the same time a fiction of the justice of time. Author(s): Jacques Rancière Title (English): Skopje: Time, Narrative, and Politics Translated by (French to English): Drew S. Burk Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Summer 2015) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje  Page Range: 7-18 Page Count: 11 Citation (English): Jacques Rancière, “Skopje: Time, Narrative, and Politics,” translated from the French by Drew S. Burk, Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Summer 2015): 7-18.

scholarly journals The Revolution Will Be Performed. Cameras and Mass Protests in the Perspective of Contemporary Art

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-23
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Image Production ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
New Situation ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Revolution

Abstract This article offers an analysis of Videograms of a Revolution (1992) by Harun Farocki and Andrej Ujica and The Pixelated Revolution (2011) by Rabih Mroue, which both reflect on the role of amateur recordings in a revolution. While the first deals with the abundant footage of the mass protests in 1989 Romania, revealing how images became operative in the unfolding of the revolution, the second shows that mobile phone videos disseminated by the Syrian protesters in 2011 respond to the desire of immediacy with the blurry, fragmentary images taken in the heart of the events. One of the most significant results of this new situation is the way image production steers the comportment of people involved in the events. Ordinary participants become actors performing certain roles, while the events themselves are being seen as cinematic. This increased theatricality of mass protests can thus be seen as an instance of blurring the lines between video and photography on the one hand and performance, theatre and cinema on the other.

scholarly journals Philosophy in the Artworld: Some Recent Theories of Contemporary Art

Philosophies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Terry Smith
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Current Regime ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
The World ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
Nestor Garcia Canclini

“The contemporary” is a phrase in frequent use in artworld discourse as a placeholder term for broader, world-picturing concepts such as “the contemporary condition” or “contemporaneity”. Brief references to key texts by philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, and Peter Osborne often tend to suffice as indicating the outer limits of theoretical discussion. In an attempt to add some depth to the discourse, this paper outlines my approach to these questions, then explores in some detail what these three theorists have had to say in recent years about contemporaneity in general and contemporary art in particular, and about the links between both. It also examines key essays by Jean-Luc Nancy, Néstor García Canclini, as well as the artist-theorist Jean-Phillipe Antoine, each of whom have contributed significantly to these debates. The analysis moves from Agamben’s poetic evocation of “contemporariness” as a Nietzschean experience of “untimeliness” in relation to one’s times, through Nancy’s emphasis on art’s constant recursion to its origins, Rancière’s attribution of dissensus to the current regime of art, Osborne’s insistence on contemporary art’s “post-conceptual” character, to Canclini’s preference for a “post-autonomous” art, which captures the world at the point of its coming into being. I conclude by echoing Antoine’s call for artists and others to think historically, to “knit together a specific variety of times”, a task that is especially pressing when presentist immanence strives to encompasses everything.

scholarly journals El rol de las comunidades campesinas de El Pato (Caquetá) en la implementación del punto dos del Acuerdo Final de Paz de La Habana, en momentos de incertidumbre nacional

2021 ◽  
pp. 301-339
Author(s):  
Juano Zuluaga García
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
National Government ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Peasant Communities ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

Resumen: La implementación del Acuerdo Final de Paz ha tenido sus avances y retrocesos. Por un lado, el panorama nacional es alarmante: se evidencian altos picos de violencia política; re- configuración de actores armados; asesinato sistemático de líderes sociales,   reincorporados, etc.; la implementación real de lo acordado es mínima; y hace falta mayor voluntad y efectividad del Estado colombiano y del Gobierno nacional. En contraste, no se pueden desconocer las dinámicas de apropiación y organización social ni el rol transformador de las comunidades desde los territo- rios. El presente trabajo tiene como propósito poner en diálogo una reflexión crítica de la situación nacional del punto dos del Acuerdo con los procesos impulsados por las comunidades de El Pato (Caquetá), y la forma en que estas vienen tejiendo una cultura política participativa y pluralista, aportando así a la implementación del punto dos en, con, desde y para el territorio. The Role of the Peasant Communities of El Pato (Caquetá) in the Implementation of Point Two of the Final Peace Agreement of Havana, in Times of National Uncertainty Abstract: The implementation of the Final Peace Agreement has had progress and setbacks. On the one hand, the national panorama is alarming: high peaks of political violence are evident. Re- configuration of armed actors; systematic murder of social leaders, reincorporated, etc. The actual implementation of the agreement is minimal; and greater will and effectiveness of the Colombian State and the national government are needed. In contrast, the dynamics of appropriation and social organization and the transforming role of the communities from the territories cannot be ignored. The purpose of this paper is to put into dialogue a critical reflection of the national situ- ation of point two of the Agreement with the processes promoted by the communities of El Pato (Caquetá). Also, the way in which they have been weaving a participatory political culture and pluralist. Thus, contributing to the implementation of point two in, with, from and for the territory. Keywords: Final Peace Agreement, democracy, democratization, pluralism, peasant communities, unity, organization, mobilization,  transformation,  social  leaders,  political  culture,  radicalization of democracy.

There’s No Regime beyond Representation

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-234
Author(s):  
Michaela Fiserova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One

The paper invites a rethink of the political conception of Jacques Rancière, a philosopher who devoted considerable reflexion to the problem of the sharing of the sensible. Rancière proposes considering the aesthetic regime without the concept of representation. According to the author, this leads him to a paradox: on the one hand, he states that the aesthetic regime takes images for art; on the other hand, he doesn’t pay attention to the fact that it shouldn’t be possible to conceive of any regime of sharing without the concept of representation. Therefore, the author proposes a deconstructive reading of Rancière’s critique of representation, demonstrating that if the contemporary image is conceived and produced in order to be shared, it can’t be freed from representation. Finally, the author puts forth the notion of meta-representation as a solution avoiding Rancière’s antinomies.

Where are Jacques and Ernesto when you need them? Rancière and Laclau on populism, experts and contingency

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (9-10) ◽  
pp. 1132-1143
Author(s):  
Thomas Claviez
Keyword(s):  
Political Elites ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The One

The response of academic intellectuals and political elites to populism is very often characterized by a mixture between outright disgust and helpless perplexity. This cannot come as a surprise, since the one thing that left and right populism have in common is that they consider the elites their enemy. The essay argues that the choice the elites have is either to openly voice their contempt for the uneducated masses, or to help educate them. However, as the contributions of Ernesto Laclau and Jacques Rancière on the topic show, this is more easily said than done. Moreover, to simply discard right-wing populism on the basis of its racist tendencies often simply serves to deflect the focus away from the legitimate grievances of those who follow – or ‘fall for’ – populist parties.

Done and Over With—Finally? Otherness, Metonymy, and the Ethics of Comparison

PMLA ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 128 (3) ◽  
pp. 608-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Claviez
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
The Other ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Jacques Rancière

A strange impatience characterizes recent debates surrounding not only comparative literature but also related fields such as recognition, ethics, postcolonialism, and cultural studies: the impatience with notions like alterity, difference, and the other. These notions have enjoyed an unprecedented (and presumably undue) amount of attention for roughly thirty-five years, but now many commentators are eager to lay to rest their spectral presence or to shoo them away like a bothersome insect. Among the most recent and resolute attempts to overcome the “excesses” of the turn toward the other is arguably the oeuvre of Jacques Rancière, who forges an analogy between the cynical foreign policy of the Bush government, including its “war on terror,” and an ethics of otherness—an ethics usually based on concepts of the sublime and linked by Rancière to the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Giorgio Agamben (Dissensus). Rancière repeatedly insists that what is often called the absolutization of the other can lead to, or at least feed into, political forms of “othering” that threaten to achieve the opposite of what they were designed to do. However, any such attempt to end the interlude of otherness—and to return to a concept of universalism or the human, however modified—means to return to sameness.

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