Product Description

"The Politics of Aesthetics" rethinks the relation between art and politics, reclaiming "aesthetics" from its current narrow confines to reveal its significance for contemporary experience. Here, Jacques Ranciere develops a critical aesthetic that goes far beyond the paradigms of modernism and modernity and their 'posts' which still haunt us. Presented as a set of inter-linked interviews, "The Politics of Aesthetics" ranges across art and politics, the uses and abuses of modernity, the role of visual technologies, the relationship between history and fiction, utopias, the avant-garde and the three aesthetic regimes, which constitute the 'partitions of the sensible.' Already translated into five languages, this English edition of "The Politics of Aesthetics" includes a new afterword by Slavoj Zizek and a new interview with Ranciere in which he situates his writing within the context of the work of, amongst others, Foucault, Barthes, Ricoeur, Kristeva, Derrida, Badiou, Balibar and Zizek.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29984 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 116 pages

Review
"'Locating the political significance of art has not only gone out of fashion, it has in recent years become a source of embarrassment. No one has argued against this repression with more precision, nuance, and undeniable force than Jacques Ranciere... This book, with an emphatic "Afterword" by Zizek, provides a riveting and compelling outline of the central elements of Ranciere's politics of aesthetics and its relation to his demanding rethinking of the political.' J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research 'A benchmark, this compact book shows why Ranciere is one of the most compelling thinkers and writers in France since Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze.' Tom Conley, Harvard University 'This is possibly the most important essay, despite its length, since Adorno's Aesthetic Theory.' Adrian Rifkin, Professor of Visual Culture, Middlesex"

About the Author
Jacques Ranciere is Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Paris VIII (St Denis) and a former student of Louis Althusser. His translated works include The Nights of Labour, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, The Names of History and Disagreement.