Proletarian Nights: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century France

by Jacques Ranciere, Donald Reid (Introduction)

Overview

Proletarian Nights, previously published in English as Nights of Labor and one of Rancière’s most important works, dramatically reinterprets the Revolution of 1830, contending that workers were not rebelling against specific hardships and conditions but against the unyielding predetermination of their lives. Through a study of worker-run newspapers, letters, journals, and worker-poetry, Rancière reveals the contradictory and conflicting stories that challenge the coherence of these statements celebrating labor.

This updated edition includes a new preface by the author, revisiting the work twenty years since its first publication in France.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844677788
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	04/17/2012
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	478
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jacques Rancière is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. His books include The Politics of Aesthetics, On the Shores of Politics, Short Voyages to the Land of the People, The Nights of Labor, Staging the People, and The Emancipated Spectator.

Table of Contents

Preface to the New English Edition vii

Introduction Donald Reid xiii

Part I The Man in the Leather Apron

1 The Gate of Hell 3

2 The Gate of Heaven 24

3 The New Babylon 49

4 Circuit Rounds and Spirals 68

5 The Morning Star 99

Part II The Broken Plane

6 The Army of Work 137

7 The Lovers of Humanity 164

8 The Hammer and the Anvil 192

9 The Holes of the Temple 230

Part III The Christian Hercules

10 The Interrupted Banquet 257

11 The Republic of Work 303

12 The Journey of Icarus 349

Epilogue: The Night of October 419

Outline Chronology 433

Editorial Reviews

With its innovative approach, Rancière’s difficult and provocative interpretation is essential reading.”—Choice

“Rancière’s brilliant book ... locates the nineteenth-century origins of European socialism not in the noble desire of artisans to control their own labor but in the utopian visions of working-class poets who wanted to be free of labor altogether ... This is a powerful, piercing, and radical argument ... Rancière has merged his philosophical and historical interests into a profound commentary on the possibilities of human freedom and of the violence done to those possibilities in freedom’s name.”—Oral History Review

“Drury’s translation puts it into English as directly and comprehensibly as possible. It’s a difficult job to do well, and the translator’s work goes a long way toward making the book more readable.”—Book News

From the Publisher

Rancière’s brilliant book ... locates the nineteenth-century origins of European socialism not in the noble desire of artisans to control their own labor but in the utopian visions of working-class poets who wanted to be free of labor altogether ... This is a powerful, piercing, and radical argument ... Rancière has merged his philosophical and historical interests into a profound commentary on the possibilities of human freedom and of the violence done to those possibilities in freedom’s name.

Oral History Review

With its innovative approach, Rancière's difficult and provocative interpretation is essential reading.

Choice