English
Jacques Rancière is an obligatory point of reference for any debate about aesthetics and politics, which is why the Polytechnic University of Valencia, with sponsorship from the Valencia French Institute has organised The First Conference of Aesthetics and Politics (23rd, 24th, and 25th March) around his ideas. Jacques Rancière: First International Conference of Aesthetics and Politics hopes to open up the debate on Rancière´s thoughts, basing itself on the relationship between literature and history.
On the 23rd of March at 5.30pm, Rancière will lead the opening conference in the Salón de Actos de la Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Informática at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. For the closing of the event, there will be a round-table debate between Jacques Rancière and other invited speakers.
Jacques Rancière was born in French Algeria in 1918. The protegee of French philosopher Louis Althusser, Rancière collaborated, along with Althusser and Ettiene Balibar for the famous book Reading Capital, a work which was highly influential amongst the intellectuals and students involved in May 1968, and which ignited the revolutionary thinking of the time, as it was a guide to reading Karl Marx: The Capital.
After May 1968, Rancière parted ways with his mentor in order to concentrate on his search for intellectual freedom, and its possible links with political freedom. A noted work is The Ignorant Schoolmaster, which is based on the experience of a professor called Joseph Jacotot during the 18th century, who claimed “who teaches if to emancipate is to stupefy.” Like Jacotot, Rancière asserts that there is no such thing as different levels of intelligence – that everybody, however simple they may be, can learn and develop their intellect if they already have the desire to emancipate themselves from the ignorance which is enforced by social inequality. This theory provoked a revolution within the rigid systems of European education.
A lover of cinema and literature, Rancière started his investigations into the links between aesthetics and politics back in the 1970s. The result of his complex intellectual analysis comprises 30 books, in which he examines traditional social representation, and the emancipation of the working classes – in literature, cinema, poetry and history. He also approaches the complicated relationship between theory and social movements, in terms of the crisis of Marxism and the prevalence of Neoliberalism.
Rancière´s intellectual work is characterised by the continuous re-thinking and subversion of the different categories of art, and the constructions of discourse. His interest in the French workers of the 19th century has been fundamental to an analysis of the construction of subjectivity created by a humanity in conditions of dominance.
Jacques Rancière is currently a fellow of philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, and philosophy professor at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.
For more information – http://cep.webs.upv.es/
Nancy Guzman
Listening to Rancière speak is a privilege – so if you find yourself in Valencia, don´t miss out on the International Conference of Aesthetics and Politics. After some high culture, kick back in relaxing rented apartments in Valencia
Translated by: Poppy
