199 reviews

The reversal of authority Alexandre Kojève, The Notion of Authority (A Brief Presentation), trans. Hager Weslati, Verso, London and New York, 2014. xxxiv + 107 pp., £14.99 hb., 978 1 78168 095 7. Since the publication of Arendt’s essays on authority, the debate around authority has been mostly dominated by her diagnoses of its crisis. […]

‘Become a permanent migrant to the UK!’

COMMENTARY ‘become a permanent migrant to the uk!’ claudia aradau Since 2005, when citizenship tests were effectively introduced in the UK, the official guidance book Life in the United Kingdom has been a veritable battleground over identity, history and knowledge. ‘Could you pass a citizenship test? ‘Most young people can’t’, the media reiterate with each […]

The history of cinema, as experience

Dossier: Philosophy of the Essay Film

The history of cinema, as experience christa BlümlingerFilm as metahistory In 1998 at the Cannes Film Festival, Jean-Luc Godard – having completed his Histoire(s) du cinéma project – presented a special reprint of the magazine Trafic. This included an article by the American artist Hollis Frampton. [1] Frampton’s essay, ‘For a Metahistory of Film: Commonplace Notes […]

The radical gap: A preface to Auguste Blanqui, Eternity by the Stars Dossier: Blanqui's Eternal Gap

Dossier: Blanqui's Eternal Gap

Dossier BL ANQUI’ S E TERNAL GAP The radical gap A preface to Auguste Blanqui, Eternity by the Stars Jacques rancière I leaf through the programme and learn that the very stars themselves – which, I am irmly convinced, should be but rarely disturbed, and even then only for high reasons of meditative gravity … […]

Debt society: Greece and the future of post-democracy

Dossier: The Greek Symptom: Debt, Crisis and the Crisis of the Left

The passage from early to late modernity is generally associated with a gradual process of democratization, in both political and economic realms. Politically speaking, representative democracy has enjoyed an unprecedented global spread. In the West, especially, political and social rights seemed to have flourished until quite recently. Economically speaking, we have witnessed a ‘democratization of […]

A precarious dialogue

Dossier: The Greek Symptom: Debt, Crisis and the Crisis of the Left

Maria Kakogianni It seems to me that we are in an intermediary situation today. The period of the great renunciation of the revolutionary past, and of the ‘end of History’, seems to be giving way to a new sequence of popular struggles (the Arab Spring, Los Indignados, Occupy Wall Street, etc.). But, within this new […]

Flaubert’s parrot

Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Literature, trans. Julie Rose, Polity Press, Cambridge and Malden MA, 2011. 215 pp., £55.00 hb., £17.99 pb., 978 0 74564 531 5 hb., 978 0 74564 530 8 pb. David Cunningham The ongoing role played by French philosophy in underwriting the contemporaneity of anglophone theory has entailed, since the 1970s, the […]

Student problems (1964): Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy (with an introduction by Warren Montag)

Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Dossier Thealthusser–Rancière Controversy Introduction to Althusser’s ‘Student Problems’ Warren montag For those familiar with Louis Althusser’s published work, reading his relatively early essay entitled ‘Student Problems’ may be a surprising and even disconcerting experience. Part of the surprise lies in the fact that the essay exists at all. Although it was published in Nouvelle Critique […]

Red years: Althusser’s lesson, Rancière’s error and the real movement of history: Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Red years Althusser’s lesson, Rancière’s error and the real movement of history Nathan brown The dissolution of the organizational forms which are created by the movement, and which disappear when the movement ends, does not reflect the weak‑ness of the movement, but rather its strength. The time of false battles is over. The only conflict […]

Reviewing Rancière. Or, the persistence of discrepancies: Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Reviewing Rancière Or, the persistence of discrepancies Bruno bosteels In the nearly four decades since its original publication, Althusser’s Lesson has acquired a certain mythical aura as the dark precursor of things to come. Even with the wealth of translations of Jacques Rancière’s work that have been published at an increasingly feverish pace over the […]

The patient cannot last long: Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

The patient cannot last long Stéphane douailler The presence on our bookshelves of such texts as Louis Althusser’s Reply to John Lewis and Jacques Rancière’s Althusser’s Lesson immediately invites the readers who pick them up to ask themselves what might be at play between titles that so readily mix, miss or specify the genres – […]

Philosophy for children

Philosophy for children Matthew charles A well‑orchestrated public relations campaign led pri‑marily by educational charity The Philosophy Shop has helped raise the profile of the philosophy for children movement in the UK significantly over the last few years. Whilst The Philosophy Shop has been promoting its ‘Four Rs’ campaign to make ‘Reason‑ing’ a central feature […]

170 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Jacques Rancière, The Politics of LiteratureJudith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor and Cornell West, The Power of Religion in the Public SphereClayton Crockett, Radical Political TheologyNiilo Kauppi,Radicalism in French CultureHeiko Schmid, Wolf-Dietrich Sahr and John Urry, eds., Cities and Fascination: Beyond the Surplus of MeaningAdrian Mackenzie, Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network CultureEncarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, Migration, Domestic Work and Affect: A Decolonial Approach on Value and the Feminization of LaborAndrew Kolin, State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush

Reviews Flaubert’s parrotJacques Rancière, The Politics of Literature, trans. Julie Rose, Polity Press, Cambridge and Malden MA, 2011. 215 pp., £55.00 hb., £17.99 pb., 978 0 74564 531 5 hb., 978 0 74564 530 8 pb. The ongoing role played by French philosophy in underwriting the contemporaneity of anglophone theory has entailed, since the 1970s, […]

Preface to Rancière’s ‘Proletarian Nights’

Preface to ‘Proletarian Nights’ The article printed below is a translation of the Introduction (pp.7-l2) of Jacques Ranci~re’s La Nuit des Proletaires, which was published last year [1]. The book deals with some well known events of the l830s and l840s – the utopias of Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet and Enfantin; the ‘Free Women’; the socialist […]

Rancière and Althusser

Hegelian Marxism than to the relations that exist in Althusser’s thought. He attacks the latter as ‘philosophy’s police mentality’ but no more. The difference is that between a clear and rigorous analytic distinction between the concepts that combine into a theory – a distinction that Al thus.ser tries to maintain – and a relationship of […]

Discussion: Rancière and Ideology

DISCUSSION Ranciere~a~d Ideology The article by Jacques Ranciere, ‘On the Theory of Ideologv’ (Radical Philosophy 7) is one of the most powerful critiques of Althusser’s work so far to have been produced from the left. Given the wide reception that Althusser’s work is now receiving in Britain it is vital that the issues which Ranciere […]

Radicalism and philosophy

Philosophy is popular in Britain at the moment, if the media be the measure; albeit mainly in the guise of a ʻguide to happinessʼ – a television guide and a happiness of a rather minimal sort. [1] Radicalism is not so popular, Ken Livingstoneʼs victory in the London mayoral contest notwithstanding (although we may be […]