Figures of History

Jacques Rancière is a leading French philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Paris-St. Denis. His many books include The Politics of Aesthetics, Aesthetics and Its Discontents and The Future of the Image.

"As our world seems to continually move from one catastrophe to the next without a credible governing leadership, authors like Rancière... force us to conceive of politics differently."LA Review of Books “The equality of all before the light and the inequality of the little people as the great pass by are both written on the same photographic plate.” With this sentence, Jacques Rancière effectively aligns his conception of aesthetic theory as the always antagonistic distribution of the sensible under the sign of the demand for equality with the invention of photography. It is a beautiful and breathtaking conceit in what is, perhaps, the most beautiful of Rancière’s texts. His accounts here of the figures of history in photography, film, and painting generally - with dazzling accounts of particular works  - expand and deepen his aesthetic theory in intriguing ways. Indeed, I cannot imagine a more inviting entrée to Rancière’s thinking about art, history and politics than this little book."J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research

• The Unforgettable1. In Front of the Camera Lens2. Behind the Window3. The Threshold of the Visible4. In the Face of DisappearanceSenses and Figures of History1. Of Four Senses of History2. History and Representation: Three Poetics of Modernity3. On Three Forms of History PaintingFilms cited