@book {80773, title = {Althusser{\textquoteright}s Lesson}, year = {2011}, publisher = {Continuum}, organization = {Continuum}, address = {London}, abstract = {

This is the first English translation of Jacques Ranciere{\textquoteright}s first book, in which he explores and begins to move beyond the thought of his mentor, Louis Althusser. "Althusser{\textquoteright}s Lesson" represents the foundations of Jacques Ranciere{\textquoteright}s theoretical project. It marks the moment at which he emerges from the tutelage of his mentor, Louis Althusser, and begins to outline the themes he will go on to develop in his later writings. Here Ranciere is already working out a non-economic and non-Marxist understanding of politics. The events of May 1968 confronted Althusser{\textquoteright}s version of a Marxism of order with one of subversion that in one fell swoop rendered Althusser{\textquoteright}s thought outdated. Yet, when Althusser finally broke his silence on this issue, with the publication in 1973 of "A Response to John Lewis", he appeared simply to return to the ideas he had espoused and defended before 1968. "Althusser{\textquoteright}s Lesson" is, in Ranciere{\textquoteright}s own words, {\textquoteright}intended to be a commentary on a lesson: the lesson in Marxism that Louis Althusser gave John Lewis. It is intended as a reflection on what this lesson wants to teach us and what it in fact teaches us, not about Marxist theory itself, but about the present reality of Marxism{\textquoteright}.

}, isbn = {9781441108050}, author = {Ranci{\`e}re, Jacques} } @book {80774, title = {Dis-agreement : politics and philosophy}, year = {1999}, publisher = {University of Minnesota Press}, organization = {University of Minnesota Press}, abstract = {

"Is there any such thing as political philosophy?" So begins this provocative book by one of the foremost figures in Continental thought. Here, Jacques Ranciere brings a new and highly useful set of terms to the vexed debate about political effectiveness in the face of a new world order.What precisely is at stake in the relationship between "philosophy" and the adjective "political"? In Disagreement, Ranciere explores the apparent contradiction between these terms and reveals the uneasy meaning of their union in the phrase "political philosophy" -- a juncture related to age-old attempts in philosophy to answer Plato{\textquoteright}s devaluing of politics as a "democratic egalitarian" process.

According to Ranciere, the phrase also expresses the paradox of politics itself: the absence of a proper foundation. Politics, he argues, begins when the "demos" (the "excessive" or unrepresented part of society) seeks to disrupt the order of domination and distribution of goods "naturalized" by police and legal institutions. In addition, the notion of "equality" operates as a game of contestation that constantly substitutes litigation for political action and community. This game, Ranciere maintains, operates by a primary logic of "misunderstanding". In turn, political philosophy has always tried to substitute the "politics of truth" for the politics of appearances.

Disagreement investigates the various transformations of this regime of "truth" and their effects on practical politics. Ranciere then distinguishes what we mean by "democracy" from the practices of a consensual system in order to unravel the ramifications of the fashionable phrase "the end of politics". His conclusions will be of interest toreaders concerned with political questions from the broadest to the most specific and local.

}, isbn = {0816628440}, author = {Ranci{\`e}re, Jacques} }