Chronicles of consensual times
By: Jacques Rancière ; translated by Steven Corcoran.
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 2010
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 156
ISBN-13: 9780826442888
Subjects: Consensus (Social sciences); Legitimacy of governments; Political science -- Philosophy
Work titles: Chroniques des temps consensuels.
Description: 'This collection shows us Jacques Ranciere at his best. The chronicle is ideally suited for his style of thinking. Ranciere philosophizes with a fine razor blade to take apart all the presuppositions behind our present-day consensus yet the effect is as fatal and irreversible as if he had used a sledge hammer.'-Bruno Bosteels.

In this fascinating collection, Jacques Ranciere, one of the world's most important and influential living philosophers, explores the nature of consensus in contemporary politics.

Consensus is not peace. Instead it refers to a map of operations of war, of a topography of the visible, of what is possible and what can be thought, in which war and peace live side-by-side. Lying at the heart of these consensual times are new forms of racism and ethnic cleansing, humanitarian wars and wars against terror. Consensus also implies using time in a way that sees in it a thousand devious turns. This is evident in the incessant diagnoses of the present and of amnesiac state politics, in the farewells to the past, the commemorations, and the calls to remember.

All these twists and turns tend toward the same goal: to show that only one reality exists and that we have to consent to it. But democratic politics stands in the way of this undertaking. These chronicles aim to re-open the space in which it can again be thought. --Book Jacket.
Table of contents: title: The head and the stomach January 1996; title: Borges in Sarajevo March 1996; title: Fin de siècle and new millenarium May 1996; title: Cold racism July 1996; title: The last enemy November 1996; title: The grounded plane January 1997; title: Dialectic in the dialectic August 1997; title: Voyage to the country of the last sociologists November 1997; title: Justice in the past April 1998; title: The crisis of art or a crisis of thought July 1998; title: Is cinema to blame March 1999?; title: The nameless war May 1999; title: One image right can sweep away another October 1999; title: The syllogism of corruption October 2000; title: Voici/voila : the destiny of images January 2001; title: From facts to interpretations : the new quarrel over the holocaust April 2001; title: From one torture to another June 2001; title: The filmmaker, the people and the government August 2001; title: Time, words, war November 2001; title: Philosophy in the bathroom January 2002; title: Prisoners of the infinite march 2002; title: From one month of May to another June 2002; title: Victor Hugo : the ambiguities of a bicentenary August 2002; title: The machine and the foetus January 2003; title: Death of the author or all too living artist April 2003; title: Logic of amnesia June 2003; title: The principle of insecurity September 2003; title: The new fictions of evil November 2003; title: Criminal democracy March 2004; title: The difficult heritage of Michel Foucault June 2004; title: The new reasons for the lie A\august 2004; title: Beyond art October 2004; title: The politics of images February 2005; title: Democracy and its doctors May 2005.