Jacques Rancière

Jacques Rancière ( born 1940 in Algiers ) is a French philosopher who is best known for his work on political philosophy and aesthetics. From 1969 to 2000 he taught at the University of Paris VIII ( Vincennes and Saint- Denis ).

Life and work

Early years

Jacques Rancière, born in 1940 in Algiers, studied from 1960 to 1965 philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, where he in 1963 with a thesis on the young Marx gets the Diplôme d' études supérieures and 1964 the aggregation. From 1964 he takes Louis Althusser's seminar on the capital part, resulting in a first also is apparent in the German translated Post: " The notion of critique and the critique of political economy ". After a year as a philosophy teacher at a Parisian lycée Rancière begins at the CNRS in 1966 with a thesis on Feuerbach, but it cancels 1968. Selected by Michel Foucault, Rancière is (then in Vincennes ) appointed in 1968 assistant at the University of Paris VIII. At this university, where he is in 1972 Maître - Assistant Maître de Conférence 1985 and 1990 Professor, Rancière, apart from some visiting professorships, taught until his retirement in 2000.

After breaking with Althusser 1968, he worked primarily as a Maoist activist group. In 1972, Rancière draws However, under the influence of Foucault, in the archives back. This historical research leads 1980 in the dissertation, under the title " La Nuit des Prolétaires: Archives du rêve Ouvrier " was released.

From 1986 to 1992 Rancière also serves as program director at the Collège International de Philosophie.

La mésentente

La mésentente (1995 ), which to this day most influential text Rancière, is an attempt to think politics as a chain of subjectivation, as a practice of the dispute, which is already taking in the Greek polis began. The struggle between rich and poor, between the powerful and the power is not excluded, therefore, a problem which applies it to solve qua politics, but politics itself, by the social unit of the unit lots ( " la part des sans -part " ) of his position is aware of and advocating their rights to be revised social structures. Among other things, this also means a rejection of the superficial consensus medialised policy.

Also important is the concept of police, as Rancière defines it, namely as a direct contrast to the policy, as a codification of inequality in the distribution of social units: This defines the relations of subjects fixed to each other, denies the existence of those without a part, the existence of an immeasurable. Political strife is the break with such an order.

Work on aesthetics

Since the early 1990s, Rancière preoccupied with questions of aesthetics, prescribes, inter alia texts on painting and film theory. His starting point in this is a criticism of the principle of representation as ' mimesis - based concept to Aristotle. With the emergence of a modern literature in the 19th century, as Rancière, there has also been a change in perception, an emancipation of the written word of any mapping function. In this conflict he locates the emergence of the film medium, which is both representation and dehierarchized discourse.

Le destin des images (2003) emphasizes the sensual quality of images: They are not only representation (representation ), but also experienced directly, subject to any order. Just such considerations are there which help Rancière to a certain popularity in the theater and media studies; Hans -Thies Lehmann about, the most famous theorist of post-dramatic theater, refers repeatedly in his essays on him.