For Revolt: Rancire, Abstract Space and Emancipation

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For Revolt: Rancire, Abstract Space and Emancipation presents an interpretation of Rancire'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 Rancire's work, it contrasts the prevailing tendencies to emphasise Rancire's sensitivity to evolving historical forms and changing regimes of sensibility. Overturning the meaning of Rancire'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 Rancire'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 Rancire's thought. It develops an immanent critique of Rancire through a discussion of his relation to Marx, spanning its coverage to Rancire's hitherto undiscussed early student work. It distils elements in Rancire's thought which resist its own defining orientation, opening ways to alternative developments. Through a critical discussion of Rancire 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.

Author Bio

Jussi Palmusaari is Lecturer in French and European politics at King's College London, UK. He holds a PhD from Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University London. He has published on European philosophy and political thought, and translated German and French philosophy into Finnish and English.