The Emancipated Spectator [Hardcover]

Jacques Rancière (Author), Gregory Elliott (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 2009

The foremost philosopher of art argues for a new politics of looking.

The theorists of art and film commonly depict the modern audience as aesthetically and politically passive. In response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a communal performance.

In this follow-up to the acclaimed The Future of the Image, Rancière takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. First asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, ironically, a sad affirmation of its omnipotence?

Editorial Reviews

Review

“What we see here is Ranciere developing a unique voice as a political theorist.” (Bookforum )

“French philosopher Jacques Ranciere is a refreshing read for anyone concerned with what art has to do with politics and society.” (Art Review )

“His art lies in the rigor of his argument—its careful, precise unfolding —and at the same time not treating his reader, whether university professor or unemployed actress, as an imbecile.” (Kristin Ross )

“In the face of impossible attempts to proceed with progressive ideas within the terms of postmodernist discourse, Rancière shows a way out of the malaise.” (Liam Gillick )

“Ranciere's writings offer one of the few conceptualizations of how we are to continue to resist.” (Slavoj Zizek )

“It’s clear that Jacques Rancière is relighting the flame that was extinguished for many—that is why he serves as such a signal reference today.” (Thomas Hirschhorn )

“What we are given is, above all, a figure of the spectator whose capacities to sense and think are greater than we have been prepared to conceive.” (Radical Philosophy )

About the Author

Jacques Rancière is 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 Nights of Labor, Staging the People, and The Emancipated Spectator.

Gregory Elliott is a member of the editorial collective of Radical Philosophy and author of Althusser: The Detour of Theory and Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Decay of Labour England?.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 134 pages
• Publisher: Verso; First Edition edition (November 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184467343X
• ISBN-13: 978-1844673438
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #715,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jacques Rancière is 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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Politics and Aesthetics November 9, 2011

By A Certain Bibliophile

Format:Paperback

This book is a set of five essays in response to Ranciere's earlier work "The Ignorant Schoolmaster." All of these pieces are tied together by Ranciere's attempt to overcome the dyad so often associated with modernist aesthetics of passive spectator/active seer. The title essay extends the concept set forth in "The Ignorant Schoolmaster" by suggesting that the knowledge gap between the educated teacher and the student should be given up in place for an "equality of knowledge." The goal of this is not to turn everyone into a scholar, however. As Ranciere says, "It is not the transmission of the artist's knowledge or inspiration to the spectator. It is the third that is owned by no one, but which subsists between them, excluding any uniform transmission, any identity of cause and effect" (15). This is by far the most cogent and understandable of the essays in the collection, and it offers an interesting suggestion in rethinking the space between the actor and viewer, teacher and student, or any other relationship. However, it struck me as the kind of idea most at home in the world of theory, one that might not be well-translated into praxis.

The second essay, "The Misadventures of Critical Thought," Ranciere criticizes the traditional role of the spectator by claiming that it, even though a mode of criticism itself, it "reproduces its own logic." He looks at photos from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Vietnam, by Martha Rosler and Josephine Meckseper. Some people do not want to view these graphic photographs, however that very refusal perpetuates and continues the logic of the war in the first place.... Therefore, a critical stance toward the image needs to shift away from this approach toward the uncoupling of two logics, "the emancipating logic of capacity and the critical logic of collective inveiglement" (48).

The last essay, "The Pensive Image," sustains a further opening up between the formalist opposition of the active and passive. Ranciere argues for a shift - again, what he argues to be an emancipating shift - away from the "unifying logic of action" toward "a new status of the figure" (121). The end of pensiveness (of being, literally, "full of thought") lies between narration and expression, one the mode of the active artist, the other of the passive spectator who fixes upon the artistic vision in order to impart to it a kind of reality.

Like a lot of (post)modern Continental writing, Ranciere's writing can be elliptical, and his arguments somewhat hard to follow, perhaps because they are difficult to sustain, however engaging. I chose this because it was short enough and seemed like a suitable introduction to his body of work. The essays were interesting and provocatively argued, but sometimes they seemed less than original: for example, the title essay really seems to add nothing to the old breaking apart of the bipolar opposition of active and passive in theatre, art, and political conscientiousness; it recapitulates it nicely, but imports nothing new to the conversation. Those looking for ways to re-imagine issues in contemporary aesthetics will find something new here (as well as penetrating discussions of the poetry of Mallarme and the films of Abbas Kiarostami), but it will unnecessarily frustrate the casual reader. Read more ›

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Incisive May 24, 2011

By Steiner VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

To put things broadly, this small collections by Ranciere is essentially a critique of "The Society of the Spectator." Ranciere's dialectical aesthetics of politics employs nuanced "aesthetic regimes" in order to unearth internal logics of political/aesthetic transformation. In particular, his comments in `The Intolerable Image,' go a long way in launching a critique of the work of art as a dispositif of visibility. That is, the very notion that the image can serve as the simultaneous link between representation, knowledge, and action is revealed as a groundless politics. A highly thoughtful and rich text.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Ranciere on art and the political. May 13, 2010

By Pen Name? VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This is a good book and the translation reads well. I don't know where the third essay in this book comes from ("Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community"). It is not from Le spectateur émancipé. It is not indicated in the book, but it here replaces the third essay in the French edition and that essay, "Les paradoxes de l'art politique" which is not here. While there is an essay entitled "The Paradoxes of Political Art" in the collection "Dissensus," that does not seem to be the same essay as the one from Le spectateur émancipé.

But aside from this bit of confusion, the text is great and the different essays still cover roughly the same territory of thought. The "Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community" essay is in fact particularly enlightening for outlining his understanding of the aesthetics of knowledge. The first essay, "The Emancipated Spectator," is another highlight in terms of developing Rancière's thinking on aesthetics and politics.