November 6, 2007
In Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy Jacques Ranciere explores the relationship between "philosophy" and the "political" in the context of age-old attempts in philosophy to answer Plato's devaluing of politics as a "democratic egalitarian" process.
Today politics is subsumed either under some idea of proper governance (capitalist liberal democracy), religion ("the clash of civilizations"), or morality (the nebulous humanitarian care for the distant other). It is mostly performed as deciding over the destiny of the people removed from the domain of the people themselves; making decisions on the people, for the people, instead of the people. Rancière opposes against this an understanding of politics where politics is nothing but the appearance of the people, the construction of a scene on which the people occur as a political subjectivity.
|