Jacques Rancière is considered one of the most important thinkers of the incipient twenty-first century, one who brings together emancipatory political and aesthetic practice in a new way.
Since the 1960s, two emancipatory philosophical schools with a global presence have established themselves: postmodernism and deconstruction. What they have in common is a critique of the previously dominant Marxism as the only fulfilling conceptual edifice of emancipatory thought and action. It had divided the world into left and right, progressive and reactionary, Marxist and wrong.
The history of the communist labour movement – its organization into parties and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the socialist states – had resulted in so many victims that these could no longer be overlooked, even by the most sympathetic minds. Intra-Marxist deviations such as Maoism proved no less disastrous than the Soviet variety of Marxism.
As the communist movement was founded by a philosopher – who then became an economist – it was only consistent that the critique of the actual communist movement was directed at its theoretical core. This historical function was fulfilled by postmodernism and deconstruction, whose main concerns are the examination and critique of totalitarian thought structures as argumentative and legitimizing foundations of totalitarian politics.
The philosopher Jacques Rancière took a different, independent path early on. In meticulous historical analyses he tried to articulate approaches to emancipatory practice that had been suppressed by totalitarian party structures. After occupying a singular position in contemporary French philosophy for many years, his research brought him back into the circle of the current avant-garde of emancipatory thought, which I would like to define as the search for new possibilities of emancipatory politics by extra-political means.
If I am not mistaken, Rancière’s current work is located within the main school of socio-critical thought in contemporary French philosophy, which, after the theoretical critique of Marxist ideology and its philosophical foundations, seeks to develop new forms of emancipatory politics outside the traditional field of politics via postmodernism and deconstruction. This tendency also includes the work of Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Nancy, however profound the differences between their philosophical approaches. In this context, Rancière has taken an entirely individual approach since the 1970s, with his critique of the structuralist interpretation of Marx which he was involved in developing. From today’s perspective, his research on the subjective side of emancipatory movements makes him one of the protagonists of contemporary French philosophy.
In the tableau of current socially committed and socio-critical thought in France, there seems to be less of a running thread than a number of philosophers with varying degrees of political activity working independently of one another. Quite separately and against entirely different backgrounds, Rancière, Badiou and Nancy are trying to redefine the field of political practice in order to open up new possibilities for a self-assured emancipatory politics. I see the motivation for these reflections in the insight that the history of emancipatory efforts in the form of political movements since the nineteenth century has repeatedly led to the dead end of totalitarian parties, and, wherever those parties came to power, totalitarian states.
Whereas Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard engaged more in a critique of language and discourse, Rancière’s work in the 1970s was closer to Michel Foucault’s analyses of institutions. His basic conviction that equality among humans was an indispensable precondition for true democracy is expressed as much in his current texts on politics and aesthetics as it was in his research on the social movements of the nineteenth century. In his books, Rancière takes a stand against a creeping erosion of democracy. He not only criticizes media intellectuals who conform to the system and show an increasing disregard for democracy, but also offers an analysis of the latest constellations and conditions for democracy after the demise of the Soviet Union.
On the one hand, there is what Rancière refers to as ‘police’ in the broadest sense – that is, the totality of power that dictates an order and forces individuals into it. On the other hand, there are the equals, the people with equal validity and their own interests. The political field is the conflict between these two sides. Democracy is not consensual but conflictual. In this sense, political activity is the resistance of the nameless and partless to concrete inequality.
Since the 1990s, Rancière has increasingly augmented his political-philosophical investigations with questions of aesthetics and examinations of the connection between political and artistic activities. The starting point for his reflections is a critique of artistic practice as representation, following on from Aristotle and his concept of mimesis. For Rancière, the liberation from the function of representation in modern literature and painting enabled the development of film and other artistic media.
In the last few years, however, the train of thought with which I began these remarks has emerged with increasing consistency. To be sure, Rancière’s aesthetic investigations can initially stand for themselves. In connection with his critique of politics, however, they increasingly also open up an important field of emancipatory activities. They make it possible to understand artistic practices as forms of a new emancipatory politics.
I would like to take this opportunity of an editor’s note to express my special thanks to Jacques Rancière, and not only for this book. When we first met in 1975, I was a DAAD1 student in Paris and needed a recommendation from a French professor in order to continue studying there. At the time, Rancière was a professor in Vincennes, the stronghold of new French thought, where Michel Foucault taught alongside Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Hélène Cixous and Jacques Lacan. Rancière kindly gave an assessment of my work and my plans, thus contributing to the extension of my scholarship and my stay in Paris. In so doing, he enabled me to take my own very personal academic path through French philosophy and unknowingly laid the foundation for my own philosophical commitment. French philosophy not only became the focus of my teaching work, but also contributed to the founding of the Passagen Verlag in Vienna, which was able to open a new chapter of critical thought in German-language discourse through a systematic and lasting transfer of contemporary French thought.
After focusing on a variety of research topics for some time, Rancière and I came together again a few years ago and have been vigorously exchanging philosophical and political views ever since. The result of this exchange, in addition to the translation of many of his books, is the present volume of conversations, which is intended to offer an accessible aid to understanding his thought.
Peter Engelmann