Synopses & Reviews
JACQUES RANCIÈRE is one of most important figures of contemporary French philosophy. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. His books include
The Politics of Aesthetics, On the Shores of Politics, Short Voyages to the Land of the People, The Future of the Image, and
The Nights of Labor.
MARY FOSTER has translated numerous texts in the area of philosophy and political science. She recently completed translating a manual for the Accompaniment and Solidarity Project with Colombia, Decolonizing Our Solidarity, and Normand Baillergeon’s Order Without Power: History and Current Challenges.
Synopsis
How do we define politics? What is our role in the unfolding of the political?
Moments Politiques finds Jacques Ranci re, the legendary French philosopher, addressing these questions in essays and interviews drawn from thirty years of passionate public discourse. Reflecting on events from the Paris uprisings of May 1968 to the near present, and on his contemporaries including Michel Foucault, Guy Debord, and Roland Barthes, Ranci re interrogates our understanding of equality, democracy, and the shifting definition of communism today.
In these short, provocative, accessible pieces, we are asked to imagine a society where the "anarchic bedrock of the political" is precisely "the power of anyone." This is a world of radical equality. It is a place where the student or factory worker's opinion is equal to that of any banker or politician. To support these ideas, key concepts of Ranci re's political thought are introduced, such as his notions of dissensus and political performance, and his special definition of "police." Moments Politiques stages unflinching confrontations with immigration law, new waves of racism, and contemporary forms of intervention. As ever, Ranci re leads by example and breathes life into his argument that "dissent is what makes society liveable."
Synopsis
JACQUES RANCIÈRE (b. 1940 in Algiers) is one of most important figures of contemporary French philosophy. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. His many books include
The Politics of Aesthetics,
On the Shores of Politics,
Short Voyages to the Land of the People,
The Future of the Image, and
The Nights of Labor.MARY FOSTER's previous translation for Seven Stories Press was Order Without Power, a collection of essays by Normand Baillergeon.
About the Author
Moments Politiques collects the short essays and interviews of Jacques Rancière from a span of thirty years, 1977 to 2007. Sparked by specific events in European and world news as they were happening, these pieces seek to call into question the inevitability we see in the world and undermine the legitimacy of what we think is possible. By examining the issues in which political moments arise, such as 9/11, immigration laws, and even the philosophy of Foucault, Rancière opens us up to the possibility of a different world, to reimagining, and re-charting, the map of what is possible.
To speak of "political moments" is to say, first and foremost, that politics is not the continuous unfolding of governmental acts and power struggles; rather, it exists in those moments that question what politics is, exactly, what kind of community it engages, what people are contained therein and of what those people are capable. Politics is the impulse that either sparks or stalls a movement.