Reading Ranciere: Critical Dissensus

284 Pages·2011·0.98 MB·English

by  Paul Bowman

Reading Rancière
PBowman_Prelims_Final.indd i 1/27/2011 3:24:03 PM
Also available from Continuum:
Chronicles, Jacques Rancière
Dissensus, Jacques Rancière
The Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Rancière
Jacques Rancière: An Introduction, Joseph J. Tanke
Jacques Rancière: Education, Truth, Emancipation, edited by Gert Biesta
and Charles Bingham
Forthcoming:
Althusser’s Lesson, Jacques Rancière
Mallarmé, Jacques Rancière
Jacques Rancière and the Contemporary Scene, edited by Jean-Philippe
Deranty and Alison Ross
PBowman_Prelims_Final.indd ii 1/27/2011 3:24:03 PM
Reading Rancière
Edited by
Paul Bowman
and
Richard Stamp
PBowman_Prelims_Final.indd iii 1/27/2011 3:24:03 PM
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Paul Bowman, Richard Stamp and Contributors, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-9037-6
PB: 978-1-4411-3781-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reading Rancière / edited by Paul Bowman and Richard Stamp.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-1-4411-9037-6 – ISBN: 978-1-4411-3781-4
1. Rancière, Jacques. I. Bowman, Paul, 1971- II. Stamp, Richard, 1968- III. Title.
B2430.R274R43 2011
194–dc22 2010043094
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in India
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction: A Critical Dissensus xi
Paul Bowman and Richard Stamp
The Thinking of Dissensus: Politics and Aesthetics 1
Jacques Rancière
The Politics of the Police: From Neoliberalism to Anarchism,
and Back to Democracy 18
Samuel A. Chambers
On Captivation: A Remainder from the ‘Indistinction of Art
and Nonart’ 44
Rey Chow and Julian Rohrhuber
Politics without Politics 73
Jodi Dean
Out of Place: Unprofessional Painting, Jacques Rancière and
the Distribution of the Sensible 95
Ben Highmore
The Wrong of Contemporary Art: Aesthetics and Political
Indeterminacy 111
Suhail Malik and Andrea Phillips
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VI CONTENTS
The Second Return of the Political: Democracy and the Syllogism
of Equality 129
Oliver Marchart
Police Reinforcement: The Anti-Politics of Organizational Life 148
Linsey McGoey
Paul de Man and Art History I: Modernity, Aesthetics and
Community in Jacques Rancière 163
Martin McQuillan
Film, Fall, Fable: Rancière, Rossellini, Flaubert, Haneke 185
Mark Robson
On the Shores of History 200
Alex Thomson
Anti-Sociology and Its Limits 217
Alberto Toscano
Against an Ebbing Tide: An Interview with Jacques Rancière 238
Jacques Rancière
Select Bibliography 252
Index 259
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Notes on Contributors
Paul Bowman (Cardiff University) is author of Post-Marxism versus
Cultural Studies (2007), Deconstructing Popular Culture (2008) and Theo-
rizing Bruce Lee (2010). He is editor of numerous journal issues and several
other books, including The Truth of Žižek (2006), also co-edited with
Richard Stamp and published by Continuum.
Samuel A. Chambers teaches political theory at Johns Hopkins University.
He has recently published The Queer Politics of Television (IB Tauris 2009).
His previous publications include the monographs Untimely Politics (NYU
2003) and Judith Butler and Political Theory (with Terrell Carver, Routledge
2008), edited volumes on William Connolly and Judith Butler, respectively,
and numerous journal articles. His current teaching and research revolves
around intersections between queer theory and contemporary political
thought and is oriented to the task of rethinking democracy outside the
terms of contemporary liberalism. He is currently writing a book on the
politics of social orders in which he tries to link Althusser’s understanding
of ideology and Rancière’s conception of police with the American political
thought of Madison and Bentley.
Rey Chow is Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature at Duke University.
She has published extensively on literature, film and cultural theory, with
a focus on the discursive encounters among modernity, sexuality, post-
coloniality and ethnicity. Before Duke, Chow was Andrew W. Mellon Pro-
fessor of the Humanities at Brown University. The books she has authored
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VIII NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
include Woman and Chinese Modernity, Writing Diaspora, Ethics after
Idealism, The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Sentimental
Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films. Her current work includes a
co-edited special issue, ‘The Sense of Sound’, for the journal differences,
and an essay collection in progress, Entanglements: Trans-medial Thinking
about Capture. The Rey Chow Reader, ed. Paul Bowman, is available from
Columbia University Press.
Jodi Dean is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith
Colleges in Geneva, New York, and Erasmus Chair in the Humanities in
the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
She is co-editor of the journal Theory and Event. Her ninth book, Democ-
racy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies, was published in 2009 from Duke
University Press.
Ben Highmore is Reader in Media and Cultural Studies at the University
of Sussex. His most recent books are: A Passion for Cultural Studies
(Palgrave 2008); Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday (Routledge 2010);
and the edited collection The Design Culture Reader (Routledge 2009).
Currently he is working on a book called The Great Indoors: An Intimate
History of the British House (due to be published in 2012).
Suhail Malik is Reader in Critical Studies in the Department of Art,
Goldsmiths, London. Malik is currently working on a philosophy of
American power and (with Andrea Phillips) a book on transnational
aesthetics.
Oliver Marchart is Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of
Lucerne. His books include Post-foundational Political Thought: Political
Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau (Edinburgh University Press
2007), and Laclau: A Critical Reader, ed. with Simon Critchley (Routledge
2004).
Linsey McGoey is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. She
completed a PhD in Sociology at the London School of Economics,
followed by postdoctoral work at the University of Oxford. Her research
examines the uses of ignorance as a productive tool for exonerating blame
and asserting expertise in modern liberal democracies.
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Notes on Contributors ix
Martin McQuillan is Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Analysis
and Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University, London. His
books include Deconstruction after 9/11 (2009), The Origins of Deconstruc-
tion (ed., 2009), Deconstruction Reading Politics (ed., 2009), The Politics
of Deconstruction (2007) and Paul de Man (2001). Forthcoming books
include Roland Barthes (Or The Profession of Cultural Studies).
Andrea Phillips is Reader in Fine Art at the Department of Art, Goldsmiths,
University of London, and Director of the Doctoral Research Programme.
She works on art, architecture, politics, institution-making and urban
regeneration, and her current research projects include the aesthetic for-
matting of transnational space and its relation to contemporary art, the
future and implications of practice-based research, and ‘Building Democ-
racy’, a set of publications and discussions that forefront critiques of
participation in contemporary art and architecture.
Jacques Rancière is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Paris-VIII (Saint-Denis). Born in Algiers in 1940, he is the author of
numerous books dealing with aesthetics, politics and their relationships.
His oeuvre includes such diverse landmarks as The Nights of Labour,
The Ignorant Schoolmaster and The Flesh of Words, as well as Disagreement
and Film Fables. His most recent book in English is The Emancipated
Spectator.
Mark Robson teaches at the University of Nottingham. His publications
include Stephen Greenblatt (2008), The Sense of Early Modern Writing
(2006) and Language in Theory (with Peter Stockwell, 2005). He edited the
collection Jacques Rancière: Aesthetics, Politics, Philosophy (2005).
Julian Rohrhuber is Professor of Music Informatics and Media Theory
at the Institute for Music and Media, Robert Schumann Hochschule,
Düsseldorf. He works in the areas of philosophy of science, art and media
theory. Actively involved in computer language programming devel opment,
he designed the synthetic sound tracks for the experimental documentary
films Alles was wir haben (2004) and Oral History (2009). His recent publica-
tions include the chapters ‘Network Music’ in The Cambridge Companion
to Electronic Music (2007), ‘Mengenlehre’ in Unmenge – Wie verteilt sich
Handlungsmacht? (2008), ‘Implications of Unfolding’ in Paradoxes of
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