Rancière and the recovery of politics

Abstract

Jacques Rancière’s work presents a passionate and uncompromising return to the question of the political—or politics proper—in opposition to politics in the ordinary sense of the word. For Rancière, the political is something irreducible, where the fundamental equality of all human beings manifests itself, whereas ordinary politics is a perversion of the political insofar as it obscures this equality, instituting instead a hierarchical arrangement of the polis. For this reason, Rancière argues that conventional politics constitutes what he calls "police" (not in the common sense of the term); here, this represents the agency that divides the polis according to the interests of those who hold a "part" in it. Rancière’s concern, however, lies with the part of the demos—that is, those "without a part"—who are simultaneously excluded from politics and inherent to it as its constant other, or its shadow. This article explores the implications of Rancière’s radicalization of the notion of the "political"—or of "politics" in the sense of the democratic pursuit of equality—for the hierarchical and consensual realm of (pseudo-)politics under the "police," and for the prospects of democracy, particularly regarding the role of what Rancière terms "dissensus."