Philosopher and His Poor

Jacques RanciÈre is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris–VIII (St. Denis). His many books include The Nights of Labor: The Workers’ Dream in Nineteenth-Century France; The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation;and Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy.Andrew Parker is Professor of English at Amherst College. He is a coeditor of Nationalisms and Sexualities and Performativity and Performance.

“Sure to provoke controversy, The Philosopher and His Poor is a virtuoso performance. I can’t think of anyone who has pursued the populist premise-the intuition that in this or that situation the grounding of truth or value is to be located in those most dispossessed-with anything approaching RanciÈre’s degree of articulateness or philosophical sophistication. I predict that this book will become a landmark.”-Bruce Robbins, author of Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress “The Philosopher and His Poor is a remarkable work. Jacques RanciÈre demonstrates the recurrence throughout the history of western thought of a particular self-constituting move: the freedom and the right to think are premised upon a situating and excluding of those whose task is other than to think, what RanciÈre calls ‘the poor.’”-Derek Attridge, author of The Singularity of Literature

• Editor’s Preface viiEditor’s Introduction: Mimesis and the Division of Labor ixA Personal Itinerary xxvI. Plato's Lie 1. The Order of the City 3 2. The Order of Discourse 30II. Marx's Labor 3. The Shoemaker and the Knight 574. The Production of the Proletarian 705. The Revolution Conjured Away 906. The Risk of Art 105III. The Philosopher and the Sociologist 7. The Marxist Horizon 1278. The Philosopher’s Wall 1379. The Sociologist King 165For Those Who Want More 203Afterword to the English-Language Edition (2002) 219Notes 229