Jacques Rancière

Garbiel Rockhill is an assistant professor of philosophy at Villanova University. He is edited and translated Jacques RanciÈre’s The Politics of Aesthetics. Philip Watts is an associate professor of French at Columbia University. He is the author of Allegories of the Purge: How Literature Responded to the Postwar Trials of Writers and Intellectuals in France.Philip Watts is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University. He is the author of Allegories of the Purge.

“Each chapter in this volume is an engaging and valuable critical engagement with RanciÈre, and, while the book as a whole makes a persuasive case for a thorough and urgent reading of RanciÈre’s work, it is also a useful critical supplement to it.” - Patrick Ffrench, French Studies “This timely collection of essays should finally jump-start the English-speaking conversation about the work of Jacques RanciÈre, one of the most innovative political philosophers now writing. His method of equality, his contrast of a stable ‘police’ order with ‘the political’ as an interruption of that order by those invisible within it, and his idea that both politics and art involve modes of distributing/partitioning the sensible together form a unique constellation of radical political thinking.”-J. M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research “What makes this volume the book that everyone interested in Jacques RanciÈre has to have is its incomparable roster of contributors. RanciÈre himself sets a standard of intellectual seriousness, and the contributors honor him by wrestling strenuously with his thought. They illuminate the trajectory of that thought and the connections between the historian of class and the philosopher of equality, the thinker of politics and the thinker of aesthetics. You can see why RanciÈre is one of the few French thinkers creating an ever greater excitement in North America.”-Bruce Robbins, author of Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State “It contextualises RanciÈre's work in a way that one cannot achieve through reading him directly, offering a companion to his core writings. In addition nearly all of the pieces infuse RanciÈre's work with a sense of urgency and timelessness that can often be lost in volumes focused on a single thinker. . . . An impressive and much-needed discussion of RanciÈre’s thought and should prove invaluable to those with an interest in his work.” - Robert Glover (Political Studies Review) “Each chapter in this volume is an engaging and valuable critical engagement with RanciÈre, and, while the book as a whole makes a persuasive case for a thorough and urgent reading of RanciÈre’s work, it is also a useful critical supplement to it.” - Patrick French (French Studies)

• Introduction: Jacques RanciÈre: Penseur de l'envers / Gabriel Rockhill and Phil WattsPart One: History1. Historicizing Untimeliness / Kristen Ross2. The Lessons of Jacques RanciÈre: Knowledge and Power after the Storm / Alain Badiou3. Sophisticated Continuities and Historical Discontinuities, Or, Why Not Protagoras? / Eric MÉchoulan4. The Classics and Critical Theory in Postmodern France: The Case of Jacques RanciÈre / Giuseppina Mecchia5. RanciÈre and Metaphysics / Jean-Luc NancyPart Two: Politics6. What is Political Philosophy? Contextual Notes / Étienne Balibar7. RanciÈre in South Carolina / Todd May8. Political Agency and the Ambivalence of the Sensible / Yves Citton9. Staging Equality: RanciÈre's Theatrocracy and the Limits of Anarchic Equality / Peter Hallward10. RanciÈre's Leftism, Or, Politics and Its Discontents / Bruno Bosteels11. Jacques RanciÈre's Ethical Turn and the Thinking of Discontents / Solange GuÉnounPart Three. Aesthetics12. The Politics of Aesthetics: Political History and the Hermeneutics of Art / Gabriel Rockhill13. Cinema and Its Discontents / Tom Conley14. Politicizing Art in RanciÈre and Deleuze: The Case of Postcolonial Literature / Raji Vallury15. Impossible Speech Acts: Jacques RanciÈre's Erich Auerbach / Andrew Parker16. Style indirect libre / James SwensonAfterword: The Method of Equality: An Answer to Some Questions / Jacques RanciÈre