Rancières La Mésentente (1995), which conflicts with classical (Plato, Aristotle) and modern (Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, etc.) political philosophy in the name of politics as action, in the name of “without part” – those who are still in a provisional public invisibility – immediately underlines its opposition to Ljotard`s Dispute. Julie Rose is a writer and translator based in Australia. She has also translated works by Paul Virilio, including The Art of the Motor (Minnesota, 1995). What exactly is at stake in the relationship between “philosophy” and the adjective “political”? In Disagreement, Rancière explores the apparent contradiction between these terms and reveals the uncomfortable meaning of their unification in the term “political philosophy”—a point related to centuries-old attempts in philosophy to respond to Plato`s devaluation of politics as a “democratic egalitarian” process. Rancière and Lyotard fought on the same ground – the articulation between aesthetics and politics. In the nineteenth century, Rancière developed a true archival approach to the literary imagination of the working class (La nuit des prolétaires, 1981, Lephilosophe et ses pauvres, 1983, etc.). Lyotard worked on the figural, this real historical push of the unconscious, which, for example, triggers the subversive figures of the carnival. The figural is the desire to undo all eras of the aesthetic and political surface of the inscription. The disagreement examines the different transformations of this regime of “truth” and their impact on practical policy. Rancière then distinguishes what is meant by “democracy” from the practices of a consensual system to unravel the effects of the fashionable expression “the end of politics”. His findings will be of interest to readers dealing with political issues, from the broadest to the most specific and local. .
In La mésentente, Rancière explicitly distinguishes between a situation of misunderstanding and a situation of dispute. He argues that misunderstandings cannot stem from the Lyotelian problem of the difference between the types of speech or the difference between the forms of expression. A situation of misunderstanding presupposes that two speakers who use either the same words but in different senses or with the same word do not refer to the same thing as the speakers. But the most radical misunderstanding is the one that separates two speakers – when the first cannot understand the second, because in his opinion the words do not belong to the articulated language, to the logos, but to an inarticulate voice, to the phôné. This voice, which according to Aristotle (in politics) people have in common with animals, can only express feelings, pleasure or pain in the form of a cry, satisfaction or hatred and by cheers or boos in the case of a group. If some people can`t consider others as speakers, it`s easy. Jacques Rancière is Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Paris VIII (Saint-Denis). He is the author of numerous books in French, three of which have been translated into English: The Nights of Labor (1989), The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991) and The Names of History (Minnesota, 1994). Lyotard (1924-1998) was sixteen years older than Rancière; Both taught philosophy at the experimental center founded in Vincennes in the fall of 1968 after the events of last May. Both went on to teach at the University of Paris-8.
For all the philosophers who chose to teach and engage in activism in Vincennes, the recruitment was politico-philosophical, according to F. Châtelet. Each non-communist Marxist group sent its representatives: the Althusser-Maoists of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d`Ulm, sent Badiou and Rancière; the Trotskyists sent Ibsaïd, Weber and Brossat, the libertarians around Schérer and Hocquenghem. This avant-garde was joined by Deleuze and Lyotard. Lyotard, who had belonged to the group ” Socialisme et Barbarie ” founded by Lefort and Castoriadis, was later greeted with some concern. As a rancid remembers at Lyotard`s funeral, they knew it wouldn`t be easy with him. In fact, the behavior of the people at this experimental university center, set up by the Gaullist government to create a kind of focal abscess for everything radical in the French university system, was not necessarily academic. It was not uncommon for the commandos of the Maoist Cultural Revolution to seek a struggle and throw philosophical arguments at Lyotard, especially after he had “betrayed the dictates of the proletariat” by developing the analyses of The Libidinal Economy.
“Is there such a thing as political philosophy?” Thus begins this provocative book by one of the leading figures of continental thought. Jacques Rancière brings here a set of new and very useful terms to the vexing debate on political effectiveness and “the end of politics”. According to Rancière, the sentence also expresses the paradox of politics itself: the absence of an adequate basis. Politics, he argues, begins when the “demos” (the “excessive” or unrepresented part of society) attempts to disrupt the order of domination and distribution of “naturalized” goods by the police and judicial institutions. Moreover, the concept of “equality” functions as a challenge game, constantly replacing political and community action with litigation. This game, according to Rancière, works according to a primary logic of “misunderstanding”. In turn, political philosophy has always tried to replace the politics of appearance with the “politics of truth.” I propose to analyze here their two approaches to aesthetics, which do not refer to the science of works of art, but to the question of aesthetics, from two different methodological angles – on language and certain intralingual conflicts that go beyond this field, and on the characterization of our time. .
Rancire`s understanding of politics is aimed precisely at the elegant and surprising presentation of the shortcomings of political philosophy The “masculinity” of this exchange did not prevent later an important discussion of letters between Lyotard and Badiou from developing during the preparation of Lyotard`s great philosophical text, The Dispute. It is hoped that this correspondence will one day be published, as it raises questions such as “Is mathematics the key to ontology?” [End page 77]. . . .