Jacques Rancière
Bio Essay
Juha Suoranta:
"Jacques Rancière (born in 1940) was a star pupil of philosopher Louis Althusser during the first half of the 1960's in Ecole Normal Supérieure in rue d’Ulm, Paris. But in the end of the decade he made a sharp intellectual distinction with his teacher accusing Althusserians of their structuralism, which, as Rancière claims, tends to serve the power elite only (Hewlett 2007, 84). According to Rancière’s critique Althusser underestimated the significance of the individual in the political and social change, collapsed to the elitism in trying to make a difference between scientific and other conceptualizations of Marxism and in claiming that the educational process is based on absolute inequality of knowledge and ignorance (ibid., 93).
Although it is hard to pigeonhole Rancière’s intellectual work it is fair to say that it is connected to the rich and turbulent traditions of French Marxism, existentialism, phenomenology and hermeneutics (Dillon 2005, 430; Hewlett 2007). His academic carrier Rancière served in the University VIII of Paris in 1969-2000, last ten years as Professor of Aesthetics and Politics of actions. He got his own political education as part of the long 1960’s and as a consequence of the events in Paris in May 1968. The communists’ groups departed and Rancière ended up in the party fraction (Gauche Prolétarienne) whose members emphasized revolutionary action instead of theory in the times of political uprising. Among the members were Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault who tried to get rid of the Leninist type vanguardism, and to abolish the division between intellectuals and workers, and intellectual and manual labor. Their ultimate objective was students’, intellectuals’ and workers' alliance and a united battlefront against conservatism and reformist politics (Reid 1989, xvi—xvii).
There is at least three distinct periods in Rancière’s work. After the influence of Althusser he first concentrated on historical studies and then devoted himself to social and political philosophy. The political philosophy has later been connected to the philosophic analysis of aesthetics and the media. These research subjects are motivated by the interest in the questions of social and political control and their relation to the concept of emancipation. Rancière believes it is not philosopher’s task to give voice to the silent and oppressed but to add her own voice into other voices: more than to interpret and write theory a philosopher’s duty is to hear and listen. And this way a philosopher helps voices to echo and adds power of the silenced. (Ibid., 137; Hewlett 2007.)
As Jean-Philippe Deranty (ibid., 136) puts it, “Rancière was out of place in the 70s, when Althusser’s brand of Marxism was the official dogma of French intelligentsia. He was out of place in the 80s, when the utopian moment was weeded out of political philosophy. He is out of place today with his neo-Hegelian aesthetics and his reading of literature focused on proletarian emancipation.” Initially Rancière had been impressed from Marx but later distanced himself from Marx’s core ideas; he is an existentialist but given up the concept of the self-assertion; postmodern theoretician who judges the language philosophy of Jean-Jacques Lyotard; students of the social order who reacts critically to Michel Foucault’s definition of power; sociologist and historian interested in the misery of the world but critical towards Pierre Bourdieu’s interpretations of the theme; theorist of the confession rejecting the concept of understanding; an expert on Gilles Deleuze whose political thinking is however geared around the notion of the subject (Deranty 2003, 136).
First and foremost Rancière is a theorist of political philosophy and equality to whom the central question seems to be “the absent presence of the equality”; to him no social order neither guarantees nor creates equality; it cannot be required either. According to Rancière, equality is an origin for political and other action, not the other way around, since equality is always practiced and verified in social practices (Dillon 2005, 430– 431). This way it is possible to understand Rancière’s interest in educational processes, and teaching methods as democratic exercise of power. The school is an establishing ‘transmission force’ of the individuals and the political system in the modern societies. Its definitiveness is concealed in its ability to appear in the disguise of democracy (Rancière 1995, 52). The school presents itself as the level honoring form of democracy, although it serves capitalism as a diploma mill and an examination automat. It has been celebrated as the ultimate apparatus of equality with its meritocratic possibilities,2) but for Rancière this does not meet the demands of the radical equality." (http://www.ffst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/doku.php?id=jacques_ranciere_on_radical_equality_and_adult_education)
More Information
- In-depth review essay: Juha Suoranta. Jacques Rancière on Radical Equality and Adult Education