Politics of Aesthetics (Continuum Impacts) Summary and Reviews

Politics of Aesthetics (Continuum Impacts)
by Jacques Ranciere, Gabriel Rockhill

Politics of Aesthetics (Continuum Impacts)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Gabriel Rockhill, Jacques Ranciere
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-06-23
ISBN: 0826489540
Number of pages: 112
Publisher: Continuum

Book Reviews of Politics of Aesthetics (Continuum Impacts)

Book Review: Burdensome words to contribute to fix the break between politics and aesthetics
Summary: 2 Stars

The volume tries to capture a snapshot of Ranciere's thought and claim it as milestone for English reading audiences. It falls short on a few counts, from translation to clarity, from background to accessibility, to make it anything but novel.

Unfortunately what Ranciere sets to do, denouncing in part the manufactured and false divide between aesthetics and politics, is a very important aspect of contemporary culture, and despite its obvious constructions for many, plenty of mainstream conceptions still play with that divide at the heart of how they present their activity. However, not only Ranciere's discourse seems obscure and convoluted during most of its length but the fact that he is making any meaningful contribution, it's doubtful at best.

The so-called "rethink" rests on a close knitted terminology that Ranciere has made up to develop his train of though, hides plenty of references and precedents, and should be better called reinvention rather than "rethinking". If one does not embed entirely the reading within his terminology, one may quickly realize the simplification of terms he falls commonly into, or ignoring entirely significant contributions that have explored in a much more inviting and meaningful terms concepts that he picks ups rhetorically ad nauseam.

This might be significant for some in a close follow-ship of Ranciere, the way his thought was developed, or the way one needs to admire and justify the professorship he held before his retirement, which carries the title of the volume.

The book comes adorned with a pompous translator preface and introduction and a cumbersome and often uncomfortably translated series of chapters slated in a semi-false interview structure to unveil topics of Raunciere's work. The volume also includes a glossary of "technical terms", which comes to mean the often self referential lingo used by Ranciere to offer his circular work, and if you want to be game, that is where one might want to start the reading.

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