Jacques Rancière taught at the University of Paris VIII, France, from 1969 to 2000, occupying the Chair of Aesthetics and Politics from 1990 until his retirement. Emiliano Battista is the translator of Jacques Rancière's Althusser's Lesson (Continuum, 2011) and Film Fables (Berg, 2006).

This precise and elegant translation of Jacques Rancière's first book will be of keen interest to those seeking to understand Rancière's thought as well as the development of French philosophy during the 1970s. It will also be of help to those working to reanimate politics through a thorough questioning of its guiding assumptions. In this short, fiery, and at points moving text, one sees Rancière's own positions begin to take root as this highly original thinker comes to grips with the legacy of his mentor, Louis Althusser. Joseph J. Tanke, University of Hawaii

• Translator's Preface \ 1. A lesson in orthodoxy: M.L. teaches John Lewis that the masses make history \ 2. A lesson in politics: philosophers do not become kings \ 3. A lesson in self-criticism: class struggle rages in theory \ 4. A lesson in history: the damages of humanism \ 5. A discourse in its place \ 6. For the record: on the theory of ideology (1969) \ Index.