Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics (New Directions in Critical Theory Book 19)

Throughout his career, shaped by a notable collaboration with Louis Althusser, Jacques Rancière has continually unsettled political discourse, particularly by examining its relationship to aesthetics. Like Michel Foucault, he broke with his many of his predecessors to upend dominant twentieth-century historical narratives and critical theories. Often overlooked in the canon of his works, Mute Speech contains the critical seeds of Rancière's most provocative assertions, challenging the intellectual orthodoxy that had come to define the nature of art and representation. Arguing that. Read more... Abstract: Throughout his career, shaped by a notable collaboration with Louis Althusser, Jacques Rancière has continually unsettled political discourse, particularly by examining its relationship to aesthetics. Like Michel Foucault, he broke with his many of his predecessors to upend dominant twentieth-century historical narratives and critical theories. Often overlooked in the canon of his works, Mute Speech contains the critical seeds of Rancière's most provocative assertions, challenging the intellectual orthodoxy that had come to define the nature of art and representation. Arguing that

Jacques Rancière has continually unsettled political discourse, particularly through his questioning of aesthetic "distributions of the sensible," which configure the limits of what can be seen and said. Widely recognized as a seminal work in Rancière's corpus, the translation of which is long overdue, Mute Speech is an intellectual tour de force proposing a new framework for thinking about the history of art and literature. Rancière argues that our current notion of "literature" is a relatively recent creation, having first appeared in the wake of the French Revolution and with the rise of Romanticism. In its rejection of the system of representational hierarchies that had constituted belles-letters, "literature" is founded upon a radical equivalence in which all things are possible expressions of the life of a people. With an analysis reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, the German Romantics, Vico, and Cervantes and concluding with brilliant readings of Flaubert, Mallarmé, and Proust, Rancière demonstrates the uncontrollable democratic impulse lying at the heart of literature's still-vital capacity for reinvention.

Columbia University Press

"Jacques Ranciere has continually unsettled political discourse, particularly through his questioning of aesthetic "distributions of the sensible," which configure the limits of what can be seen and said. Widely recognized as a seminal work in Ranciere's corpus, the translation of which is long overdue, Mute Speech is an intellectual tour de force proposing a new framework for thinking about the history of art and literature. Ranciere argues that our current notion of "literature" is a relatively recent creation, having first appeared in the wake of the French Revolution and with the rise of Romanticism. In its rejection of the system of representational hierarchies that had constituted belles-letters, "literature" is founded upon a radical equivalence in which all things are possible expressions of the life of a people. With an analysis reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, the German Romantics, Vico, and Cervantes and concluding with brilliant readings of Flaubert, Mallarme, and Proust, Ranciere demonstrates the uncontrollable democratic impulse lying at the heart of literature's still-vital capacity for reinvention."--Publisher description Content: Introduction: Through the Looking Glass Introduction: From One Literature to An Other PART 1: From Restricted to General Poetics Chapter 1: From Representation to Expression Chapter 2: From the Book of Stone to the Book of Life Chapter 3: The Book of Life and the Expression of Society PART 2: From Generalized to the Mute Letter Chapter 4: From the Poetry of the Future to the Poetry of the Past Chapter 5: The Book in Pieces Chapter 6: The Fable of the Letter Chapter 7: Writing at War PART 3: The Contradictions of the Work of Literature Chapter 8: The Book in Style. Chapter 9: The Writing of the IdeaChapter 10: Artifice, Madness, the Work Conclusion: A Skeptical Art Notes.