Understanding Rancière, Understanding Modernism: (Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism)

The contemporary philosopher Jacques Rancière has become over the last two decades one of the most influential voices in philosophy, political theory, and literary, art historical, and film criticism. His work reexamines the divisions that have defined our understanding of modernity, such as art and politics, representation and abstraction, and literature and philosophy. Working across these divisions, he engages the historical roots of modernism at the end of the eighteenth century, uncovering forgotten texts in the archive that trouble our notions of intellectual history. The contributors to Understanding Rancière, Understanding Modernism engage with the multiplicity of Rancière's thought through close readings of his texts, through comparative readings with other philosophers, and through an engagement with modernist works of art and literature. The final section of the volume includes an extended glossary of the most important terms used by Rancière, which will be a valuable resource for experts and students alike.

Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors Series Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction Patrick M. Bray, Ohio State University, USA Part I – Conceptualizing Rancière 1. The Hatred of Democracy and “The Democratic Torrent”: Rancière's Micropolitics Emily Apter, New York University, USA 2. Rancière's Nineteenth Century: Equality and Recognition in Nights of Labor Bettina Lerner, City College CUNY, USA 3. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Intellectual Emancipation in Circular Form Leon Sachs, University of Kentucky, USA 4. Literature as Rancièrian Film Fable Margaret C. Flinn, Ohio State University, USA 5. The Emancipated Spectator and Modernism Cary Hollinshead-Strick, American University of Paris, France 6. Mute Speech: The Silence of Literature in Rancière's Aesthetic Paradigm Giuseppina Mecchia, University of Pittsburgh, USA 7. Le Fil Perdu: The Music of the Indistinct David F. Bell, Duke University, USA Part II – Rancière and Aesthetics 8. A Method of Equality: Rancière, Jokes, and their Relation to They Drive by Night Tom Conley, Harvard University, USA 9. Feminist Art: Disrupting and Consolidating the Police Order Tina Chanter, Kingston University London, UK 10. Rancière and Proust: Two Temptations Suzanne Guerlac, University of California, Berkeley, USA 11. The Conception of the Will in Rancière's Aesthetic Regime of the Arts: Pathos and Reverie in Stendhal, Ibsen and Freud Alison Ross, Monash University, Australia 12. Dreaming Bourdieu Away: Rancière and the Reinvented Habitus Marina Van Zuylen, Bard College, USA 13. Rethinking the Aesthetics/Politics Nexus in Latin America Silvia L. López, Carleton College, USA Part III – Glossary of Key Terms Distribution of the Sensible Daniel Brant, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Fable Audrey Évrard, Fordham University, USA Intellectual Equality Zakir Paul, University of Chicago, USA Mute Speech Alison James, University of Chicago, USA Regimes of Art Robert St. Clair, Dartmouth College, USA Part IV - Interview with Jacques Rancière 'Understanding Modernism, Reconfiguring Disciplinarity,' interview with Rancière translated by Patrick M. Bray, Ohio State University, USA Index

About the Author :
Patrick M. Bray is Associate Professor of French at the Ohio State University, USA. He is the author of The Novel Map: Space and Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century French Fiction (2013) and co-editor of Building the Louvre: Architectures of Politics and Art (2014).

Review :
Patrick Bray's collection Understanding Rancière, Understanding Modernism brings together some of the foremost scholars engaging with the work of Jacques Rancière today. What is perhaps most notable about it, however, is that reading it is akin to finding oneself in the 'unpredictable' library that Rancière laments the loss of in the volume's concluding interview. If the old Bibliothèque Nationale's 'heterogeneous books…grouped together side by side,' enabled Rancière to write as he does, crossing disciplinary borders and thinking around singular problems in the mode of discovery rather than mastery, the volume's approach to Rancière operates on a similar principal (p. 277). Allowing the reader unfamiliar with Rancière's work to find footholds in the definitions of key concepts found in the volume's third section, the collection also offers unexpected new directions. Bray's collection - and Bloomsbury's series, generally - provides a wealth of intriguing new theoretical possibilities. In addition to highlighting the range and influence of Rancière's work, these essays confirm the rigour, richness, and robust critical independence of the responses this work is now inspiring. As a result, this collection not only offers a compelling account of current work around Rancière: it relaunches this work anew. Deviating wisely down the byways of Rancière's writing by attending closely to the textual and conceptual singularity of a significant constellation of hitherto less extensively debated works, this collection does indeed provide invaluable new understanding of his unfailingly productive struggle with modernism. The volume is suffused with that acutely responsive sensitivity to the shifting displacements of his unclassifiable project which Rancière speaks of in the substantial and wide-ranging closing interview. A cornucopia of some of the best critical minds working in French theory today. It contains a challenging yet highly accessible collection of essays that illuminate the importance of one of the most important theorists of today. Patrick M. Bray has done a masterful job in editing a collection that will have a long shelf life.