Art, Politics and Rancière - by Tina Chanter (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Even those who take themselves to be breaking from tradition-from the metaphysical tradition of philosophy, from grand narratives, neoliberalism or Eurocentrism-can remain blindly attached to them. Art, Politics and Rancière: Broken Perspectives provides an account of how works of art can, but do not necessarily, interrupt dominant narratives.

Inspired by Jacques Rancière, Tina Chanter assumes his work as a starting point. She presents a rigorous and appreciative critique of Rancière's story of aesthetics, paying close attention to gender and race. Along with the relationship between the unconscious and the political, perception is a key theme throughout, used to address questions such as 'How do some things become visible, while other things remain invisible?' 'What does it take for something to be seen, and why do other things elude visibility?'

Alongside illuminating discussions of Rancière, Heidegger and Levinas are informed accounts of artists Ingrid Mwangi, Phillip Noyce, Ingrid Pollard, and Gillian Wearing. Outlining the basis of a new political aesthetic, Art, Politics and Rancière develops an original philosophical consideration that is sensitive to race and gender, yet not reducible to these concerns.

Review Quotes

In this beautifully written book, Tina Chanter gives a compelling and critical outline of Jacques Rancière's conjunction between art and politics. She is particularly impressive in filling out some of the details missing from his selective references to the history of philosophy on topics like tyranny and slavery. Chanter's driving contention is that Rancière does not adequately address the questions at the core of feminist politics. From this premise, she takes his ideas in new directions, some of them antithetical to his most cherished positions. The result is a stimulating and provocative work that draws Rancière's thought into new arenas and debates.

Providing a philosophically expansive understanding of Rancière's views of the interweaving of aesthetics and politics, Tina Chanter deftly distills his recasting of major ideas, such as those about the relation between art and life, the hierarchy of form and matter, and the Kantian aesthetic community. She luminously traces how Rancière both looks into and runs away from gender, race, and coloniality. By reading him alongside contemporary feminist art, she persuasively shows how we nonetheless can at once insist-with Rancière-on the potentialities of dissensus as central to politics and artistic critique, and hold assumptions of equality to the standards they champion.

Tina Chanter appreciates like no other thinker that for Rancière, aesthetics and politics are inseparable. In this learned study she unravels the political powers of perceptibility and imperceptibility, and astutely articulates the modernist aesthetic sensibilities at the heart of Rancière's democratic politics. In short, this book is a welcome and needed addendum to those interpretations of Rancière's work that disregard the political power of the aesthetic and the aesthetic power of politics.

About the Author

Tina Chanter is Professor of Philosophy and Gender at Kingston University, UK.