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The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible

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This brief collection of Ranciere's corpus gives the reader a picture of his complex reworking of the logic of historical representations of art and politics. Ranciere is known for his reformulation of the great transitions in the history of art, to "regimes of historicity." In particular, his reflections on the "aesthetic regime" of art are truly incisive reconfigurations of politics-aesthetics in terms of what he calls the "distribution of the sensible." Additionally, the translator has provided a helpful appendix explaining Ranciere's terminology. This text is a very good place to start for readers who are new to his work.

I have found this book entirely engrossing, despite some of the author's arcane writing style. The subtitle, The Distribution of the Sensible, is the major focus of the book,which is central to the author's ouevre. I find instances where he is building on both the notions of Foucault's power and knowledge equations of disciplinary discourse and Weber's processes of rationalization. The analysis of history as a possible fiction narrative is unique and erudite, as is his rethinking of Benjamin's "aura" in the arts as a distinction between mimesis and aesthetic forms of artistic production, which was a rethinking of Hegel's "Spirit". I dig it.

The volume tries to capture a snapshot of Ranciere's thought and claim it as milestone for English reading audiences. It falls short on a few counts, from translation to clarity, from background to accessibility, to make it anything but novel.

Unfortunately what Ranciere sets to do, denouncing in part the manufactured and false divide between aesthetics and politics, is a very important aspect of contemporary culture, and despite its obvious constructions for many, plenty of mainstream conceptions still play with that divide at the heart of how they present their activity. However, not only Ranciere's discourse seems obscure and convoluted during most of its length but the fact that he is making any meaningful contribution, it's doubtful at best.

The so-called "rethink" rests on a close knitted terminology that Ranciere has made up to develop his train of though, hides plenty of references and precedents, and should be better called reinvention rather than "rethinking". If one does not embed entirely the reading within his terminology, one may quickly realize the simplification of terms he falls commonly into, or ignoring entirely significant contributions that have explored in a much more inviting and meaningful terms concepts that he picks ups rhetorically ad nauseam.

This might be significant for some in a close follow-ship of Ranciere, the way his thought was developed, or the way one needs to admire and justify the professorship he held before his retirement, which carries the title of the volume.

The book comes adorned with a pompous translator preface and introduction and a cumbersome and often uncomfortably translated series of chapters slated in a semi-false interview structure to unveil topics of Raunciere's work. The volume also includes a glossary of "technical terms", which comes to mean the often self referential lingo used by Ranciere to offer his circular work, and if you want to be game, that is where one might want to start the reading.

This sort of book is always a pig in a poke and the pig is the translation. the translater here, one Gabriel Rockhill, is either very badly edited by Continuum (always possible) or is a dreadful writer. If you want an introduction to Ranciere, read _The Ignorant Schoolmaster_, which is translated by kristin Ross. I can't imagine why Continuum put out such a shoddily edited book, except maybe they figured, cynically, it would be read by art students, on whom actual prose is wasted.

If you're in art school, you're already wasting thousands on a useless degree, but here is sixteen dollars that you can save. Don't buy this book.