Jacques Rancière: Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (2010)

“Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics brings together some of Jacques Rancière’s most recent writings on art and politics to show the critical potential of two of his most important concepts: the aesthetics of politics and the politics of aesthetics.

In this fascinating collection, Rancière engages in a radical critique of some of his major contemporaries on questions of art and politics: Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Jacques Derrida. The essays show how Rancière’s ideas can be used to analyse contemporary trends in both art and politics, including the events surrounding 9/11, war in the contemporary consensual age, and the ethical turn of aesthetics and politics. Rancière elaborates new directions for the concepts of politics and communism, as well as the notion of what a ‘politics of art’ might be.

This important collection includes several essays that have never previously been published in English, as well as a brand new afterword. Together these essays serve as a superb introduction to the work of one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.”

Edited and Translated by Steven Corcoran
Publisher Continuum, London/New York, Jan 2010
ISBN 1847064450, 9781847064455
240 pages

Reviews: Todd May (NDPR), David W. Hill (Marx & Philosophy).

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Fred Botting, Scott Wilson (eds.): The Bataille Reader (1997)

Since the publication in France of his Oeuvres Completes in the mid-1970s, the breadth of Bataille’s writing and influence has become increasingly apparent across the disciplines in, for example, the fields of literature, art, art history, philosophy, critical theory, sociology, economics, and anthropology.

Publisher Wiley, 1997
Blackwell Readers series
ISBN 0631199594, 9780631199595
368 pages

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Michel Henry: Barbarism (1987/2012)

Barbarism represents a critique, from the perspective of Michel Henry’s unique philosophy of life, of the increasing potential of science and technology to destroy the roots of culture and the value of the individual human being. For Henry, barbarism is the result of a devaluation of human life and culture that can be traced back to the spread of quantification, the scientific method and technology over all aspects of modern life. The book develops a compelling critique of capitalism, technology and education and provides a powerful insight into the political implications of Henry’s work. It also opens up a new dialogue with other influential cultural critics, such as Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger.

First published in French in 1987, Barbarism aroused great interest as well as virulent criticism. Today the book reveals what for Henry is a cruel reality: the tragic feeling of powerlessness experienced by the cultured person. Above all he argues for the importance of returning to philosophy in order to analyse the root causes of barbarism in our world.

Originally published in French as La Barbarie by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1987
Translated by Scott Davidson
Publisher Continuum, London/New York, 2012
Volume 95 of Continuum Impacts
ISBN 1441132651, 9781441132659
168 pages

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