Aesthetics and its Discontents * The Aesthetic Unconscious

The two short books under review here are the most recent translations of works by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. Some might be tempted to view the evident interest in Rancière's work among British and American philosophers of a continental bent as merely the latest instance of a besotted fascination with modish French iconoclasts, all determined to dismantle much of what proceeds under the heading of ‘philosophy’ and certainly to take a very sceptical stance towards ‘aesthetics’ in particular. Whatever the merits or demerits of such a brisk characterization of the work of figures such as Jean-François Lyotard and Alain Badiou, it is impossible straightforwardly to include Rancière's work along with theirs. For Rancière does not wish to stamp out the dying embers of aesthetics but rather to reignite them. Proponents of ‘the anti-aesthetic’ (the title of an influential collection of essays edited by Hal Foster) have sought to undermine

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Heading (navigation · Literature · Skepticism · Unconscious mind · Wish · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Artistic and Creative Research · Critical Theory and Political Philosophy · Philosophy