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120+ Obras 3,424 Miembros 18 Reseñas 5 Preferidas

Sobre El Autor

Jacques Ranciere is one of the most influential philosophers writing today. He taught at the University of Paris VIII, France, from 1969 to 2000, occupying the Chair of Aesthetics and Politics from 1990 until his retirement. Steven Corcoran is a writer and translator living in Berlin. He has edited mostrar más and/or translated several works by Jacques Rancire, including Dissensus (2010, 2016), two works by Alain Badiou, Polemics (2006) and Conditions (2008) and Alienation and Freedom by Frantz Fanon (2017). mostrar menos

Obras de Jacques Rancière

El Espectador emancipado (2008) 313 copias
The Future of the Image (2007) 286 copias
Hatred of Democracy (2005) 265 copias
On the Shores of Politics (1995) 163 copias
The Philosopher and his Poor (1983) 106 copias
El Inconsciente Estético (1656) 76 copias
The Intervals of Cinema (2011) 61 copias
Politics of Literature (2007) 46 copias
Althusser's Lesson (1974) 38 copias
La noche de los proletarios (1981) 37 copias
Figures of History (2012) 29 copias
Malaise dans l'esthétique (2004) 19 copias
The Edges of Fiction (2017) 19 copias
Moments Politiques (2009) 17 copias
Politics and Aesthetics (2016) 7 copias
Distancias do Cinema, As (2012) 7 copias
Ist Kunst widerständig? (2008) 6 copias
MARGENS DA FICCAO , AS (2010) 5 copias
Kurmacanın Kıyıları (2019) 4 copias
Esther Shalev-Gerz (2010) 3 copias
Zehn Thesen zur Politik (2008) 3 copias
Suskun Söz (2016) 3 copias
O Espectador Emancipado (2022) 3 copias
La parole ouvrière (2007) 3 copias
Disenso (2014) 2 copias
Penser l'émancipation (2022) 1 copia
Zeit der Landschaft (2022) 1 copia
Le travail des images (2019) 1 copia
La méthode de la scène (2018) 1 copia
Uzlasi Çagina Notlar (2019) 1 copia
Esztétika és politika (2009) 1 copia
Sinematografik Masal (2016) 1 copia
Lire 1 copia
Les Voyages de l'art (2023) 1 copia
Das Verfahren der Szene (2019) 1 copia

Obras relacionadas

Para leer el capital (1965) — Contribuidor — 462 copias
Democracy in What State? (2009) — Contribuidor — 104 copias

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Um dos exemplares está em EstSalaB3
 
Denunciada
ulisin | Jun 14, 2022 |
كتاب لذيذ، استمتعت معه بقراءة نقد للديموقراطية الغربية من رجل غربي، من أنفسهم ! .. وقد بدأ الكتاب بذكر أن من يعادون الديموقراطية هم ثلاثة أصناف: من يريدون أن تكون السلطة بحكم الوراثة، ومن يريدونها أن تكون بحكم الكفاءة، والقسم الثالث هم من يجعلون قانون الوحي الإلهي هو الأساس الشرعي الوحيد لتنظيم المجتمعات البشرية.

ثم ذكر أن الكراهية الجديدة للديموقراطية -التي هو أحد ممثليها- لا تتعلق بالضبط بنموذج واحد من تلك النماذج، بل تجمع عناصر مستعارة من أوجه انتقادات هؤلاء وأولئك.

لعل أبرز ما عَلق بذهني من انتقادات المؤلف للديموقراطية - وهي انتقادات من زوايا متعددة - الآتي:

- أن قوانين ومؤسسات الديموقراطية، ما هي إلا أدوات تتم بواسطتها سيطرة طبقة معينة على مقاليد السلطة، ويُدّعى أن هذه الطبقة هي حكم الشعب نفسه بنفسه ! .. بينما اختيار الحكام في الديموقراطية هو اختيار يتم عن طريق المصادفة أو ضربة حظ، وهي لا تؤدي فحسب إلى حكم غير الأكفاء، بل تؤدي إلى أن يصل إلى السلطة= القادرون على الوصول إليها .. فليست الديموقراطية هي سلطة الشعب، ولا سلطة السكان مجتمعين، ولا الأغلبية ولا الطبقات الكادحة .. بل سلطة النخبة التي تصل إلى السلطة بما في يديها من إمبراطوريات المال والإعلام، وبقدراتها على الغش والخداع، ثم تتبادل تلك النخبة مقاعد السلطة والمعارضة فيما بينها .. فالديموقراطية هي احتكار طبقة - كان من حظها أنها تمتلك أدوات الوصول للحكم - يعطيها الشعب حق الحكم، كي تدّعي أنه هو الذي يحكم .. فالأقلية الأقوى هي التي تصل للحكم دون متاعب.

- أيضاً، فإن الديموقراطية تُذكي سطوة العامة، وتشجع على الأنانية، وتسود فيها سيطرة الرغبات اللامحدودة للأفراد، باسم الحرية .. فكل فرد - وكل فئة - يريد أن يحصل على ما يريد، وعلى أكبر قدر من المكاسب وإشباع الرغبات، دون نظر إلى الحدود التي تضعها المصلحة العامة للمجموع .. فالديموقراطية هي سيطرة الإفراط، الإفراط في الرغبة والشهوة والمطالب، وهذا من أسباب دمار الحكم والمجتمع .. فما كان يُذم بالأمس من الشمولية - إذ تسيطر الدولة على أفراد المجتمع بزعم تحقيق الصالح العام - يحدث الآن مقلوباً، إذ تسيطر أهواء ورغبات وشهوات الأفراد على الدولة - دون نظر إلى صالح المجمتع - باسم الديموقراطية

- كذلك، تصدر الديموقراطية مصطلح "المساواة" وتنشره .. فلا مجال في الديموقراطية للتفريق بين الأكفاء وغير الأكفاء، بين الحكام والمحكومين، بين النساء والرجال، بين الشباب والعجائز، بين العالم والجاهل .. فالكل يريد أن يكون له حق متساوي مع الآخر، حتى لو كان حقاً فيما ليس له فيه مجال ! .. فالمعلم يخشى التلاميذ ويطريهم، وهم من جانبهم يسخرون منه ! .. الشباب يساوون أنفسهم بالعجائز، والعجائز يحاكون الشباب، والأب يتعود على معاملة ابنه نداً لند !

ولا يجوز أن يحكم الحكماء على الجهلاء ! ، فهذا في الديموقراطية مخالف للمساواة ! .. ولا فرق بين الرجل وبين المرأة، ولا بين الشباب وبين العجائز فالديموقراطية لا تُبالي بالاختلافات الاجتماعية والفطرية .. بل الحيوانات ذاتها حرة ! ، والخيول والحمير واعية بحريتها وكبريائها !.

فالديموقراطية ليست فحسب شكلاً سيئاً للحكم، بل أسلوب حياة يتعارض مع كل حكم منظم للجماعة .. إنها على وجه الدقة: تدمير كل العلاقات التي تشكل المجتمع البشري.

هذا بعض من انتقادات المؤلف للديموقراطية، وأسباب كراهيتها .. وقد أعجبني جداً نقد المؤلف لمبادئ: الحرية، والأنانية، والمساواة .. بمفهومها الليبرالي .. وهذه الثلاثة من أصول الليبرالية .. وقد ذكرني ذلك بنقد الشيخ الطريفي لها في كتابه: العقلية الليبرالية في رصف العقل ووصف النقل .. وهو كتاب قيّم ثمين .. فحبذا قراءته

أخيراً، لم يذكر المؤلف وجهة نظره فيما يكون بديلاً للديموقراطية .. ووددت لو كان فعل ذلك؛ لنتعرف على وجهة نظر غربية في هذا الموضوع.
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Denunciada
asellithy | 4 reseñas más. | Aug 31, 2021 |
A fun little polemic, which is particularly interesting to read in the US, rather than in France. Ranciere attacks French critics of democracy. His book suggests that France will be a monarchy within a few years, as everyone everywhere is constantly complaining that the masses are irresponsible, narcissistic consumers who have no interest in anything other than the next commodity. How did this happen?

"Democracy has come to be attributed with engendering both the form of social homogeneity recently accounted for by totalitarianism and the self-generating growth inherent to the logic of Capital."

In other words, everything that people used to think would happen to us thanks to totalitarianism, or used to think has happened to us because of capitalism, is now said to have happened to us because of democracy. On this argument, the "dominant intelligentsia", which can no longer use totalitarianism as an argument in favor of their conservatism (because totalitarianism isn't much of a danger), and which cannot use anti-capitalist arguments (because they've aligned themselves with neoliberalism) still need a whipping post, and that post is democracy and individualism... by which, Ranciere suggests, they mean an egalitarian society. Where radicals argue that commodification is the result of capitalism's structural requirements, the new intelligentsia argue that commodification is the result of people not being able to keep their wallet in their pants.

Ranciere then lays out his own understanding of democracy, via a critique of the history of political philosophy, in which the great Greeks mostly pooh-poohed the idea. He says, more or less, that democracy is not a *form* of government, and certainly not the form we're living with; it is the legitimating principle of government itself; it names the consent of the governed, it names the reason to accept political reasons. But consent of this kind cannot be forced, it must be given, or government must rule without it--but if a state tries to do without the consent, it will face a "democratic movement," which is anti-capitalistic and egalitarian. There is an inevitable conflict between the (bad) limitlessness of capitalism and the (good) limitlessness of democracy.

It turns out, on Ranciere's understanding, that "the evils of which our 'democracies' suffer are primarily evils related to the insatiable appetite of oligarchs," which I assume means the aforementioned limitlessness of capitalism and not, as the sentence actually says, simple greed. This oligarchical system is (supposedly) legitimated by the popular vote, and by technological competence (as Habermas predicted long ago); but the popular vote and technological competence don't really go together. So the legitimation of our states is contradictory, and the clash of democracy and oligarchy will persist.

There are some obvious formal problems with Ranciere's argument. First, and most obviously, his redefinition of democracy is incredibly abstract. In this book, at least, it seems to mean little other than "people will want what they want;" Ranciere just asserts that what people want is equality and not capitalism. But (silly example ahoy!) what if people really want to water their lawns during a drought? In the clash between the hated state expert and the democratic insurgent gardeners, the state must win, or the gardeners, like everyone else, die of thirst.

Second, he insists that democracy has no foundation and neither is nor has a subject of history; there is no development from the present to an actually existing democracy, only "singular and precarious acts" in the "here and now." Which means, of course, that his understanding of democracy is transhistorical. But if that is so, why has nobody been wise enough, before Ranciere, to understand democracy properly? What is so very special about his definition? And where did this transhistorical fact come from?

And, third, his resistance to historical thinking (in this book) and ideology critique means that he must attribute the failure of democracy to an evil cabal of intellectuals, all keeping the People down in the name of greed. That, I suggest, is not really happening anywhere.

On a different note, it's always funny to read French theorists in America--the societies, governmental structures and dominant intellectual tendencies are so very, very different. The idea that there is an epidemic of elitist intellectuals defaming democracy doesn't really hold much water in a country that altogether lacks elitist intellectuals, and has a government run by fools rather than knaves; not to mention that if anyone should suggest that democracy isn't the cure of every problem in America, s/he would be ostracised and probably forcibly deported to China so s/he could see 'what it's really like without democracy.'

But no matter what you think of Ranciere's argument, he gets in some nice jabs at other, even worse arguments--for instance, "We do not live in democracies. Neither, as certain authors assert--because they think we are all subjected to a biopolitical government law of exception--do we live in camps." He also points out some nice ironies--for instance, that in the neoliberal battle against the state, it is invariably *non*-state institutions that were set up *in the teeth* of the state that get hammered: unions, higher education, cultural bodies and so on. Actual state institutions (police, army, and so on) go on doing what they've always done.
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Denunciada
stillatim | 4 reseñas más. | Oct 23, 2020 |
Late twentieth century French philosophy is a very puzzling beast, particularly for non-Europeans. Anglophones often denounce it as fashionable nonsense on the one hand--and other Anglophones then complain that these denouncers just don't get it, which is true. In fact, this latter group argues, French philosophy is a wonderful attempt to revolutionize thought. And then the first group suggests that this latter group is simply following a trend that has no real content. This is also true.

Because, at least as I understand it, French philosophy is neither a fashion industry, nor a wonderful attempt to revolutionize thought. It is a response to an incredibly specific set of historical and intellectual circumstances, that are more or less unique to France:

i) The French Communist Party, which was both powerful (insofar as it had a lot of members) and powerless (it's possible that the party never stood up to anyone in the twentieth century, rolling over for anyone, whether the French government, the USSR, or capitalism itself). It was also intellectually moribund.

ii) 1968: most recent French philosophy is a response to May 1968 and the problems it raises for social thought. Most importantly, the key questions are not "What is true?" or "What is just?", as in the arid desert of analytic philosophy, but "How can there be a revolution?", "Why, given the state of the world, is there not a revolution?", and "What would a legitimate revolution look like?"

iii) Structuralism, which in the U.S. really was an intellectual fashion, but in France somehow became *the* dominant mode of thought. The problems with structuralism are fairly obvious, viz., it ignores historical change, and it ignores agency/contingency. So structuralism simply cannot answer the revolutionary questions listed above.

iv) French intellectual history also plays an important role. The odd anglo philosopher might pop his (always a man, since this is real, pointless, my-cock-is-bigger-than-yours territory) head up and make a big deal about the Death of God or something. And then nobody cares. But in France, serious thinkers are almost always deeply opposed to any possibility of the transcendent, because the French church has, historically, been ultra-reactionary, and the left has been anti-clericalist. (This leads, of course, to some people wondering if this is really the right approach, and so you get phenomenologists explicitly turning to religion). Also: Descartes, not Locke; that is, rationalism, not empiricism.

With that out of the way, I knew nothing about Ranciere before reading this little book, and now I feel little need to learn more about him. He fits very nicely into this history of French philosophy: he's reacting against Althusser (an arch-structuralist, and arch-communist), trying to explain what a 'real' revolution would look like, and to explain why there hasn't been one.

STRUCTURALISM: I'm tempted to say that his work is *just* a response to structuralism. As he puts it, "what I try to do really is to target certain topic that both create some kind of discourse of political impotence and, on the other hand, either generate an idea that art cannot do anything or what you have to do is reproduce this stereotypical criticism of the commodity and consumption," (78). This is in the context of garbage art that just reproduces commodification, which is a fair point. But it's obvious that Ranciere's understanding of Marx is entirely structuralist, which means he doesn't actually understand commodities. So his rejection of ideology-critique (see below) is a rejection of a bad form of ideology critique, and has nothing to do with better forms of it (i.e., Frankfurt school). I'm not sure he knows that, though.

REVOLUTION: A real revolution, on his understanding, will involve a change in what it is possible to sense and therefore understand. Where Kant puts forward an unchanging set of conditions for the possibility of knowledge, Ranciere suggests that the conditions change and can be changed; when they are changed, the kinds of knowledge possible will also change. This is very much like Badiou, except where Badiou feels the need to use set theoretical language to make his point, Ranciere feels the need to use the language of aesthetics to make his, while fudging the lines between politics and aesthetics: "Politics and art, like forms of knowledge, construct 'fictions', that is to say material rearrangements of signs and images, relationships between what is seen and what is said, between what is done and what can be done," (35).

THE LACK OF REVOLUTION: There hasn't been a real revolution because the dominant mode of politics doesn't allow for it. This comes out in Zizek's afterword, which somewhat confusingly doesn't come at the end of the book. Again, like Badiou, Ranciere likes to schematize things; here, he posits three kinds of politics, roughly, communitarian, liberal, and Marxist. All of them deny the possibility of a real revolution in various ways. Today, Zizek suggests (possibly describing Ranciere, it's impossible to tell, as is Zizek's wont) we live post-politics, which is even worse. So our first revolutionary act must be an assertion of the importance of politics once again.

Along the way, Ranciere makes some nice points: he describes how postmodernism quickly becomes nihilistic (24), and tries to move past the idea that artworks and 'real' life can be separated off easily. Instead, the work of art functions in material reality just as, say, an apple functions in material reality. See: Deleuze.

On the other hand, he takes the worst tendencies of French philosophy (and no, I do not mean the silly jargon-mongering) to absurd lengths. I've mentioned his rejection of ideology critique. There are plenty of reasons not to reject ideology critique entirely, including the fact that it seems fairly clear that people act against their own interests, that people don't vote for emancipatory parties, nor act emancipatorily, nor seem to have too much of a problem with massive oppression. Given all this, why would you want to get rid of ideology critique?

Because, Ranciere suggests, "where one searches for the hidden beneath the apparent, a position of mastery is established," (46). In other words, one should not set oneself up as having a better understanding of the world than the illiterate field worker in Kansas, because that would be undemocratic. The fact that the actually existing world *is* very much undemocratic--which is why there are illiterate field workers in Kansas--has no purchase here. The fairly glaring problem with Ranciere's argument (and those like it) is that just acting *as if* human beings were genuinely equal does nothing to promote the creation of actual equality. Or, as Propagandhi put it, "And yes, I recognize the irony: the system I oppose affords me the luxury of biting the hand that feeds. That's exactly why privileged fucks like me should feel obliged to whine and kick and scream, until everyone has everything they need." Which is very different from pretending that privilege has no effects on human behavior.

This is not democratic thought; it's the dei- and reification of democracy. Zizek notes something similar, though in a far friendlier way (71), when he points out that the options for French philosophy appear to be a rejection of politics, on the one hand, or a rejection of economics, on the other: either you can be a pure soul making only perfectly democratic claims, like Ranciere; or you can sell out and pay attention to poverty and commodification, on the other. This is a false dichotomy. Economic injustice makes it almost impossible for people to support revolution, because why would a Kansan field worker support a revolution? They won't see that they have anything to gain, and will see that they have almost nothing left to lose--but that almost nothing tends to be their family, and their life.

It's pretty petty after these objections, but I'm also heartily sick of French philosophers 'interpreting' French literature to make it revolutionary, when it is *SO BLEEDING OBVIOUSLY* not revolutionary. No, Jacques Ranciere, Balzac, Flaubert, Mallarme etc... are not revolutionaries. Yes, they are wonderful writers. That is the progressive aspect of their work: that it's really freaking good, even though everything in the world tries to force us to make things that are crappy for the sake of a dollar. But of course, that would be a sell out to the economic point of view.

If you care after all of that, know that this is a quick read, that Ranciere's writing is as horrific as you'd expect, as is that of the editors and translators; that putting Zizek at the end of all this horrific writing explains his popularity (because it's like putting a chapter from any moderately comprehensible novelist in the middle of a book by Kant), and that after the revolution nobody will print books in sans serif font. WHY? THE PAIN! THE PAIN!
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stillatim | otra reseña | Oct 23, 2020 |

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