The Political Thought of Jacques Rancière: Creating Equality

Overview

This book examines the political perspective of French thinker and historian Jacques Rancière. Rancière argues that a democratic politics emerges out of people’s acting under the presupposition of their own equality with those better situated in the social hierarchy. Todd May examines and extends this presupposition, offering a normative framework for understanding it, placing it in the current political context, and showing how it challenges traditional political philosophy and opens up neglected political ...

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Overview

This book examines the political perspective of French thinker and historian Jacques Rancière. Rancière argues that a democratic politics emerges out of people’s acting under the presupposition of their own equality with those better situated in the social hierarchy. Todd May examines and extends this presupposition, offering a normative framework for understanding it, placing it in the current political context, and showing how it challenges traditional political philosophy and opens up neglected political paths. He demonstrates that the presupposition of equality orients political action around those who act on their own behalf—and those who act in solidarity with them—rather than, as with the political theories of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Amartya Sen, those who distribute the social goods. As May argues, Rancière’s view offers both hope and perspective for those who seek to think about and engage in progressive political action.

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780271034492
  • Publisher: Penn State University Press
  • Publication date: 7/28/2008
  • Format: Library Binding
  • Pages: 224
  • Product dimensions: 6.20 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 0.70 (d)

Meet the Author

Todd May is Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University. He is the author of five previous books published by Penn State Press: Between Genealogy and Epistemology: Psychology, Politics, and Knowledge in the Thought of Michel Foucault (1993); The Political Philosophy of Post-Structuralist Anarchism (1994); The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism (1995); Reconsidering Difference: Nancy, Derrida, Levinas, Deleuze (1997); and Our Practices, Our Selves: Or, What It Means To Be Human (2001).

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Table of Contents

1 Passive Equality 1

2 Active Equality: Democratic Politics 38

3 The Historical Roots of Democratic Politics: Anarchism 78

4 The Normative Framework of Democratic Politics 102

5 Active Equality in Contemporary Politics 142

Bibliography 189

Index 195

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