Egalitarian Moments: From Descartes to Rancière: (Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy)

Jacques Rancière's work has challenged many of the assumptions of contemporary continental philosophy by placing equality at the forefront of emancipatory political thought and aesthetics. Drawing on the claim that egalitarian politics persistently appropriates elements from political philosophy to engage new forms of dissensus, Devin Zane Shaw argues that Rancière's work also provides an opportunity to reconsider modern philosophy and aesthetics in light of the question of equality. In Part I, Shaw examines Rancière's philosophical debts to the 'good sense' of Cartesian egalitarianism and the existentialist critique of identity. In Part II, he outlines Rancière's critical analyses of Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg and offers a reinterpretation of Rancière's debate with Alain Badiou in light of the philosophical differences between Schiller and Schelling. From engaging debates about political subjectivity from Descartes to Sartre, to delineating the egalitarian stakes in aesthetics and the philosophy of art from Schiller to Badiou, this book presents a concise tour through a series of egalitarian moments found within the histories of modern philosophy and aesthetics.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction: Philosophy and Equality Part I: Subjectivity Chapter 1: The 'Good Sense' of Cartesian Egalitarianism 1.1. 'a history or, if you prefer, a fable' 1.2. Descartes's Egalitarianism and the Problem of Separation 1.3. The Rationality of a Wrong 1.4. Woman as Other, Woman as Subject 1.5. Toward Collective Egalitarianism Chapter 2: The Nothingness of Equality: Rancière's 'Sartrean Existentialism' 2.1. Marked By Sartrean Existentialism 2.2. The Politics of Equality 2.3. Between the Practico-inert and the Party 2.4. Subjects of Contingency 2.5. The Politics of Impossible Identification Part II: Aesthetics Chapter 3: Modernity, Modernism, and Aesthetic Equality 3.1. Disagreement and Misunderstanding 3.2. From Mimesis to Aesthetics 3.2.1. Breaking with Mimetic Norms 3.2.2. Mute Speech and Literary Equality 3.3. Artistic Autonomy and Sociology in Greenberg 3.4. Benjamin's 'Archaeomodernism' 3.4.1. The Politics of Art and Technology 3.4.2. Archaeomodernism and Metapolitics 3.5. Fragmentary Emancipation, Common Sense, and Aesthetic Equality Chapter 4: Aesthetics, Inaesthetics, and the Platonist Regime of Art 4.1. The Return from Exile 4.2. Between Aesthetics and Inaesthetics 4.3. Between Aesthetic Education and the Absolute 4.3.1. Aesthetic Emancipation and Policing 4.3.2. Schiller's Aesthetic Freedom 4.3.3. Schelling on Artistic Production and Practical Reason 4.4. Monuments and Micropolitics 4.5. Heterotopias: One World Divides Into Two Conclusion: The Politics of Aisthesis Bibliography

About the Author :
Devin Zane Shaw teaches philosophy at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. He is author of Freedom and Nature in Schelling's Philosophy of Art (Bloomsbury, 2010) and is co-editor of, and contributor to, “Theory Mad Beyond Redemption”: The Post-Kantian Poe, a special edition of the Edgar Allan Poe Review (2012).

Review :
The book speaks to an urgent, incomplete task of contemporary philosophy: to be done with its decades-long tradition of scholastic, ritual self-flagellation and get on with the business of thinking the emancipatory transformation of the world. Shaw's contribution to this task is impressive, erudite, and takes a path less traveled. Egalitarian Moments is a work that deserves careful attention from those interested in putting Rancière's thought to productive use-to doing things with Rancière-as well as those interested in egalitarian politics more generally. Shaw's work provides an important contribution to Rancierian scholarship and continental philosophy alike; his discussion of less well known secondary material in the history of philosophy is brilliantly used to advance his position.