For Revolt: Rancière, Abstract Space and Emancipation

For Revolt: Ranciere, Abstract Space and Emancipation presents an interpretation of Ranciere's uncompromising view of emancipation, drawing on its invariably rational and Kantian-moralist basis. Tracing a logic of abstract or empty space in all of Ranciere's work, it contrasts the prevailing tendencies to emphasise Ranciere's sensitivity to evolving historical forms and changing regimes of sensibility. Overturning the meaning of Ranciere's interest in the sensible enables the capture of the object of his thought as a revolt against the reality accorded to ordered temporalities and forms of appearance as such. In making its argument, For Revolt reconstructs Ranciere's relations to some of the crucial, yet unexplored, politico-historical frameworks of his thought, such as the Cultural-Revolutionary Maoism and the French Revolution, offering a fresh perspective to these revolutionary paradigms. In contrast to dominating views, the book makes a case for a fundamentally positive influence of Louis Althusser's philosophy on Ranciere's thought. It develops an immanent critique of Ranciere through a discussion of his relation to Marx, spanning its coverage to Ranciere's hitherto undiscussed early student work. It distils elements in Ranciere's thought which resist its own defining orientation, opening ways to alternative developments. Through a critical discussion of Ranciere in relation to other contemporary accounts of revolt and resistance, the book addresses the present predicament of emancipatory politics, its emphasis on the actualities of here and now and its difficulties to envisage programmatic realisations of radically alternative futures.