r survey - core · 2017. 12. 3. · arlette farge who has been involved in rancie`re’s projects,2...

IRSH 57 (2012) pp 61ndash85 doi101017S0020859011000769r 2011 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis

SURVEY

A Thorn in the Side of Social History JacquesRanciere and Les Revoltes logiques

M I S C H A S U T E R

Research Centre for Economic and Social HistoryUniversity of Zurich

E-mail misufswuzhch

SUMMARY The article explores the intersection of history and politics in the worksof French philosopher Jacques Ranciere by focusing on the collectively editedjournal Les Revoltes logiques (1975ndash1985) It argues that the historiographic projectof Les Revoltes logiques took up specific forms of counter-knowledge that wereembedded in radical left-wing politics of their day It further traces both theengagement with historiography and the role of history in Rancierersquos later workafter the dissolution of the journal Its conclusion looks at certain shared interestsbetween some of Rancierersquos themes and some recent writing of social history

What is the meaning of a thinker of the inactuel such as Jacques Rancierebecoming lsquolsquoactualrsquorsquo The French philosopher occasional historian andformer Maoist militant (born 1940) attracts attention today beyondnarrow circles of academic specialists or theory-obsessed individuals Theart world has taken up Rancierersquos concepts and the introductions andcollective volumes are blossoming in literary and film studies aestheticspedagogy and political philosophy1 What has hardly been discussed

The present article is redrafted from the one which appeared in the journal SozialGeschichteonline 5 (2011) My thanks to the editors of SozialGeschichte online also to Daniel ErniDaniela Janser Magaly Tornay Andreas Fasel and Mario Wimmer for their discussion andhelpful criticism and especially the reading group Magnusstrasse1 To give a limited and necessarily subjective selection Paul Bowman and Richard Stamp(eds) Reading Ranciere (London [etc] 2011) Jean-Philippe Deranty (ed) Jacques RanciereKey Concepts (Durham NC 2010) Gabriel Rockhill and Philip Watts (eds) Jacques RanciereHistory Politics Aesthetics (Durham NC 2010) Nick Hewlett Badiou Balibar Ranciere Re-Thinking Emancipation (London 2007) Charlotte Nordmann BourdieuRanciere La politique

terms of use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0020859011000769Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore University of Basel Library on 11 Jul 2017 at 073206 subject to the Cambridge Core

however is Rancierersquos relationship to history This may well be becausesince the late 1990s the philosopher has more rarely referred to thearchives of working-class history to develop his arguments than he did fora while from the mid 1970s onwards But an understanding of history asrupture lies at the heart of Rancierersquos project In this sense Ranciere haspractised historiography in order as a philosopher to shift his questions toa different terrain He has also critically commented on the politics andpoetics of historical science His texts form according to the historianArlette Farge who has been involved in Rancierersquos projects2 a lsquolsquothorn inthe sidersquorsquo of social history3

Ranciere writes of a collection of some of his earlier essays that theycontain words lsquolsquotoday seen as awkwardrsquorsquo such as lsquolsquopeople poor revolutionfactory workers proletariansrsquorsquo ndash and it is not enough to point out that at thetime these texts were written this kind of vocabulary was current usage4 It israther that when they were written Ranciere was already bringing differenttime periods together resorting to stories and characters from the nineteenthcentury in order to shake the certainties of the surrounding present ndash thedebates of the radical Left in France after 1968 I shall discuss here thisdouble untimeliness the connection between historiography and militantintellectual practice This was the purpose for which a collective historicalproject was set up in which Ranciere was involved the periodicalLes Revoltes logiques that was published from 1975 to 1981

I shall go on to show how Les Revoltes logiques and Ranciere in hisindividual work deployed the specific perspectives and methods of theradical Left movement These included forms of lsquolsquomilitant investigationrsquorsquothat have been discussed recently particularly in connection with Italianoperaismo5 In France similar practices were linked with the bywords

entre sociologie et philosophie (Paris 2006) Laurence Cornu and Patrice Vermeren (eds) Laphilosophie deplacee autour de Jacques Ranciere (Paris 2006) also see the journal issueslsquolsquoJacques Ranciere Aesthetics Politics Philosophyrsquorsquo Paragraph 28 (2005) lsquolsquoJacques Rancierelrsquoindisciplinersquorsquo Labyrinthe 17 (2004) lsquolsquoAutour de Jacques Rancierersquorsquo Critique 601602 (1997)2 Camille Deslypper and Guy Dreux lsquolsquoLa parole comme evenement Entretien avec ArletteFargersquorsquo Nouveaux regards 30 (2005) online at httpwwwparutionscomindexphppid5

1amprid54ampsrid5100ampida56299 (last accessed 14 November 2011)3 Farge names among others as similar lsquolsquothornsrsquorsquo Paul Veyne Michel Foucault and Italianmicrohistory Arlette Farge lsquolsquoLrsquohistoire socialersquorsquo in Francois Bedarida (ed) Lrsquohistoire et lemetier drsquohistorien en France 1945ndash1995 (Paris 1995) pp 281ndash300 290ff4 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoPreface to the English Editionrsquorsquo in idem Staging the People The Pro-letarian and His Double David Fernbach (transl) (London [etc] 2011) This volume and itssuccessor The Intellectual and His People (London [etc] 2012) contain Rancierersquos contribu-tions to the periodical Les Revoltes logiques that are discussed below The argument repeatedhere is presented more explicitly in Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoPrefacersquorsquo in idem Les scenes du peupleLes Revoltes logiques 1975ndash1985 (Lyons 2003) pp 7ndash185 Alberto Toscano in a gripping and pertinent article has criticized Rancierersquos challenging ofscientific practice and indicated as a counter-example for consideration the inchiesta of Italian

62 Mischa Suter


etablissement and enquete ndash albeit against a different background andwith a pronounced shift of emphasis Etablissement referred to themovement of students who went into the factories in search of theworking class The disruption of social categories by the reciprocal con-nection of two revolts in the factories and the universities also governedRancierersquos assessment of 19686

The present article maintains that Les Revoltes logiques sought at amoment when the revolutionary impulse of 1968 was on the decline totransfer certain practices of the movement into new fields With its thirteenvolumes a special issue published in 1978 on the subject lsquolsquo1968rsquorsquo andtwo collections published 1984 and 19857 Les Revoltes logiques is anexample of the various historical initiatives that arose in the mid 1970sand not only in France8 Ranciere also discussed the encounter betweenworkers and intellectuals in his major historiographic work La nuit desproletaires (1981)9 Starting from a concern with working-class historyhe later commented on the difficulty faced by the historical and socialsciences of conceptualizing the space for a personal emancipatory breakon the part of the agents involved I shall seek to trace the path he followedstarting with an explanation of the periodical and going on to sketchsome of Rancierersquos arguments

operaismo a particular modus of counter-knowledge I would like to argue on the other handthat Ranciere proceeded precisely from related forms of counter-knowledge even if in a specificcontext and that his trajectory led him to different conclusions cf Alberto Toscano lsquolsquoAnti-Sociology and Its Limitsrsquorsquo in Bowman Reading Ranciere pp 217ndash237 Of the comprehensivehistorical literature on militant investigation in operaismo that has meanwhile appeared I canonly indicate here Steve Wright Storming Heaven Class Composition and Struggle in ItalianAutonomist Marxism (London 2002) and Karl Heinz Roth lsquolsquoBenedetta sconfitta Die Zeit-schrift lsquoPrimo Maggiorsquo in der dritten Phase des Operaismusrsquorsquo suppl to Wildcat 83 (2009)pp 13ndash306 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoQuels lsquoevenementsrsquorsquorsquo La Quinzaine litteraire 459 (1986) pp 35ndash367 Collectif Revoltes logiques (ed) Lrsquoempire du sociologue (Paris 1984) idem Esthetiques dupeuple (Paris 1985) Peter Schottler mentions that after the periodical was closed a lsquolsquobulletinrsquorsquowas still produced for a while but this is not dealt with in the present article Peter SchottlerlsquolsquoVon den lsquoAnnalesrsquo zum lsquoForum-Histoirersquo Hinweise zur lsquoneuen Geschichtersquo in Frankreichrsquorsquo inHannes Heer and Volker Ulrich (eds) Geschichte entdecken Erfahrungen und Projekte derneuen Geschichtsbewegung (Hamburg 1985) pp 58ndash71 668 Just to mention here what should be done but is not possible on this occasion a comparativelook at the various historical projects of that time Cf Schottler lsquolsquoVon den lsquoAnnalesrsquo zumlsquoForum-Histoirersquorsquorsquo Kristin Rossrsquos survey of the afterlife of May 1968 as well as Donald Reidrsquosintroduction to the English translation of La nuit des proletaires ndash the present article owes moreto both the latter texts than can be expressed in a few footnotes See Kristin Ross May rsquo68 andIts Afterlives (Chicago IL [etc] 2002) pp 116ndash137 Donald Reid lsquolsquoIntroductionrsquorsquo in JacquesRanciere The Nights of Labor The Workersrsquo Dream in Nineteenth-Century France JohnDrury (transl) (Philadelphia PA 1989) pp xvndashxxxvii9 Jacques Ranciere La nuit des proletaires Archives du reve ouvrier (Paris 1981) translated asRanciere Nights of Labor

Jacques Ranciere and Les Revoltes logiques 63


A C O L L E C T I V E H I S T O R I C A L I N I T I AT I V E A F T E R 1 9 6 8

lsquolsquoJrsquoai ete amene sur le terrain de lrsquohistoirersquorsquo Ranciere said looking back in aninterview with Le Monde lsquolsquopar les impasses de la grande idee des annees1968ndash1970 lrsquounion de la contestation intellectuelle et du combat ouvrierrsquorsquo[lsquolsquoI was led onto the terrain of history by the impasses of the great idea of theyears 1968ndash1970 the union between intellectual challenge and workersrsquostrugglersquorsquo]10 This turn to history started with a rejection of the theory that hadmarked the beginning of Rancierersquos intellectual development As a student ofphilosophy at the Ecole normale superieure (ENS) Ranciere had been in the1960s a pupil of Louis Althusser Althusser pursued the theoreticist project ofdefending the scientific character of Marxism against the forms of what hesaw as humanistic ideology Althusserrsquos approach found great resonance in theCercle drsquoUlm the ENS division of the communist student organizationwhich was seeking new fields of activity after the end of the Algerian war ndasha decisive moment of politicization for that generation11

Althusserrsquos seminar led to the immensely influential publication of Lire LeCapital in 1965 with a contribution by Ranciere along with those of EtienneBalibar Pierre Macherey and Roger Establet12 A year later a section of theUnion etudiante communiste broke away and the increasingly Maoist-inspired Union des Jeunesses Communistes (Marxistes-Leninistes) wasformed13 With the founding of the Vietnam support committees and the

10 Edmond El Maleh lsquolsquoJacques Rancierersquorsquo in Christian Delacampagne (ed) Entretiens avec LeMonde 6 vols I Philosophies (Paris 1984) pp 158ndash166 15911 Jacques Ranciere La Lecon drsquoAlthusser (Paris 1974) now in English translation asAlthusserrsquos Lesson Emiliano Battista (transl) (London [etc] 2011) pp 41ff IronicallyAlthusserrsquos philosophy in its theoreticist phase actually had thoroughly political effects forRanciere whereas his latter interventions after the decisive rejection of theoreticism remainedcompletely behind the situation ibid pp 23ff12 Louis Althusser Jacques Ranciere and Pierre Macherey Lire Le Capital I (Paris 1965)Louis Althusser Etienne Balibar and Roger Establet Lire Le Capital II (Paris 1965) Theabbreviated republication as a paperback in 1968 (without the texts by Ranciere Establet andMacherey) sold 78000 copies within two years When the publisher Francois Maspero planneda new edition of the original version Ranciere asked to add a criticism and self-criticism to hiscontribution Maspero refused appealing to the original contract of 1965 whereupon Rancierepublished this text in Les Temps modernes Francois Dosse History of Structuralism II TheSign Sets 1967ndashPresent Deborah Glassman (transl) (Minneapolis MN 1997) pp 181ffJacques Ranciere lsquolsquoMode drsquoemploi pour une reedition de Lire le Capitalrsquorsquo Les Temps modernes328 (November 1973) pp 788ndash80713 For a new English-language presentation of the Maoist intellectuals in France with a verydifferent interpretation from that put forward here cf Richard Wolin The Wind from the EastFrench Intellectuals the Cultural Revolution and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton NJ 2010)especially pp 109ndash154 Julian Bourg argues in a similar vein in lsquolsquoThe Red Guards of ParisFrench Student Maoism in the 1960srsquorsquo History of European Ideas 31 (205) pp 472ndash490 For anoverview cf Belden Fields Trotskyism and Maoism Theory and Practice in France and theUnited States (New York 1988)

64 Mischa Suter


etablissement movement (for more on which see below) the UJC (M-L)turned increasingly to practical forms of politics the revolt of 1968 finallydealt a deathblow to the prestige of Althusserianism Ranciere too underthe influence of 1968 and the search for new forms of practice made abreak with his former teacher In his critical rejection of AlthusserRanciere formulated themes that would recur later in his philosophyAlthusser according to Ranciere pursued philosophy as a discourse oforder raising intellectuals to a controlling instance14 to which Ranciereopposed the political concepts of lsquolsquoverifications drsquoidentitersquorsquo and lsquolsquointerdic-tions de sejourrsquorsquo15 Against this lsquolsquoraison policierersquorsquo it was necessary topursue a lsquolsquodecalibrationrsquorsquo of theoretical knowledge

Lrsquoideologie proletarienne ce nrsquoest ni le sommaire des representations ou desvertus ouvrieres ni le corps des doctrines lsquoproletariennesrsquo crsquoest une chaınearretee une autorite bafouee un systeme de divisions entre postes de travailannule une riposte de masse aux innovations lsquoscientifiquesrsquo de lrsquoexploitation crsquoestaussi la medecine aux pieds nus ou lrsquoentree de la classe ouvriere dans lrsquoUniversitechinoise [Proletarian ideology is neither a summary of working-class representa-tions of virtues nor the body of lsquoproletarianrsquo doctrines it is a stopped assembly-linea flouted authority a cancelled system of divisions between jobs a mass response tothe lsquoscientificrsquo innovations of exploitation it is also barefoot doctors and theentrance of the working class into Chinese universities]16

Moreover this was not just a turn away from the theoretical thinking ofan elite Anyone who sought to take lsquolsquomass practicesrsquorsquo seriously from aphilosophical point of view17 was forced to recognize the actual contra-dictory character of social struggles Rancierersquos first publication in bookform Althusserrsquos Lesson (1974) was accordingly the attempt at a politicalcartography in the wake of 1968 The question was to locate Althusserrsquosthinking historically and politically ndash to trace the conditions of its emergencewhat it meant in terms of intervention and the blockages that it producedThe occasion for it was provided by Althusserrsquos Reply to John Lewis whichhad been published the previous year a moment when gauchisme had lost itscoherence and Althusser as Ranciere saw it proposed unification in the

14 Ranciere Althusserrsquos Lesson pp 113 67 6815 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoSur la theorie de lrsquoideologie ndash politique drsquoAlthusserrsquorsquo LrsquoHomme et lasociete Revue internationale de recherches et de syntheses sociologiques 27 (1973) pp 31ndash61 34These quotations are taken from the lsquolsquoavertissementrsquorsquo to the essay which was omitted from thereprinting in English translation of the appendix to Althusserrsquos Lesson16 Ranciere lsquolsquoSur la theorie de lrsquoideologiersquorsquo p 34 35 (original emphasis) On lsquolsquopolice reasonrsquorsquocf among others Jacques Ranciere Dis-agreement Politics and Philosophy Julie Rose (transl)(Minneapolis MN 1999) originally published as La mesentente (Paris 1995) idem lsquolsquoTenTheses on Politicsrsquorsquo Theory and Event 53 (2001) (httpmusejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv00553Rancierehtml last accessed 30 August 2011) originally published as lsquolsquoDixtheses sur la politiquersquorsquo in Jacques Ranciere Au bord de la politique (Paris 1998)17 Ranciere lsquolsquoSur la theorie de lrsquoideologiersquorsquo p 35



name of the party For gauchisme at this point had no answer to the newmovements and forms of struggle that arose in the 1970s The struggles of thewomenrsquos movement of school pupils immigrants and rural workers forexample could not be brought down to a single common denominator lsquolsquoIt isnot just that these struggles which attack power in its varied and sometimescontradictory manifestations present us with a multiplicity that makesachieving a synthesis more complicated It is more importantly that they arethemselves a multiplication of the discourses of the revoltrsquorsquo18

This lsquolsquomultiplication of the discourses of the revoltrsquorsquo was pursued byRanciere from 1969 onwards at the new university of Vincennes (Paris VIII)where Michel Foucault who had built up the philosophy department therebefore he was called to the College de France had intensively recruitedintellectuals from the radical Left19 At Vincennes non-hierarchical formsof collaboration were possible20 At the end of 1974 the Centre derecherches pour les ideologies de la revolte was set up The foundingmanifesto of the Centre was signed by Ranciere along with the feministphilosopher and historian Genevieve Fraisse later co-editor of thenineteenth-century volume of the Histoire des femmes21 as well as thephilosopher and author Jean Borreil The editorial collective of the firstissue of Les Revoltes logiques in winter 1975 included Pierre Saint-Germain Michel Souletie Patrick Vauday and Patrice Vermeren Inmid-1978 they were joined by Christiane Dufrancatel Stephane Douaillerand Philippe Hoyau and in late 1980 also by Serge Cosseron ArletteFarge Daniel Lindenberg and Danielle Ranciere who all had alreadypublished in the periodical

Les Revoltes logiques combined archival research with the explicitintention of theoretical development (and particularly of not falling backon the philosophical canon) Its aim was to restore the lsquolsquomemory of thepeoplersquorsquo What Les Revoltes logiques meant by this was neither the historyof progress fixed on the state that marked the official historiography of

18 Ranciere Althusserrsquos Lesson p 119 This quotation varies from Emiliano Battistarsquos trans-lation which renders lsquolsquorevoltersquorsquo as lsquolsquostrugglersquorsquo cf the French original Lecon drsquoAlthusser p 219For a later comment on Althusser cf lsquolsquoLa scene du textersquorsquo in Sylvain Lazarus (ed) Politique etphilosophie dans lrsquooeuvre de Louis Althusser (Paris 1993) pp 47ndash66 as well as the shorttextbook article lsquolsquoAlthusserrsquorsquo in Simon Critchley and William R Schroeder (eds) A Companionto Continental Philosophy (Malden MA 1998) pp 530ndash53619 Charles Soulie lsquolsquoLe destin drsquoune institution drsquoavant-garde Histoire du departement dephilosophie de Paris VIIIrsquorsquo Histoire de lrsquoeducation 77 (1998) pp 47ndash69 50ff On Foucault atVincennes cf David Macey The Lives of Michel Foucault A Biography (New York 1993)pp 219ndash236 especially 221ff20 Paul Cohen lsquolsquoHappy Birthday Vincennes The University of Paris-8 Turns Fortyrsquorsquo HistoryWorkshop Journal 69 (2010) pp 206ndash224 21221 George Duby and Michelle Perrot (eds) Histoire des femmes en occident 5 vols (Paris1991ndash1992) IV Genevieve Fraisse and Michelle Perrot (eds) XIXe siecle (Paris 1992)

66 Mischa Suter


the workersrsquo movement nor an left-radical heroics of the worker but alsonot the disillusion with gauchisme that the nouveaux philosophes (AndreGlucksmann Bernard-Henri Levy and others) displayed which soughtto lsquolsquosprinkle Marx with the muddy waters of Kolymarsquorsquo ndash the Siberian riverthat gave its name to the gulag22 What was characteristic of the periodicalwas rather the turn that is evoked in its title On the one hand it recallsthe slogan of the Chinese Cultural Revolution which appears in Frenchas lsquolsquoon a raison de se revolter contre les reactionnairesrsquorsquo23 On the otherthe expression lsquolsquoles revoltes logiquesrsquorsquo is a phrase from Arthur Rimbaudrsquospoem lsquolsquoDemocracyrsquorsquo in Illuminations on the defeat of the Paris CommuneThe full lines of this text express the triumphalism of the victors lsquolsquoAuxcentres nous alimenterons la plus cynique prostitution Nous massacrer-ons les revoltes logiquesrsquorsquo [lsquolsquoIn the metropolis we will feed the mostcynical whoring We will destroy all logical revoltrsquorsquo] Taken out of contextthe meaning is shifted the inner logic of revolt is opposed to the pervasiveassertion of order by the victors24

The journal was interested in lsquolsquothe materiality of the ideologies ofrevoltrsquorsquo lsquolsquoles formes de perception de lrsquointolerable la circulation des motsdrsquoordre et des idees pratiques de la revolte les formes de savoir ndash manuelet intellectuel ndash qui transforment lrsquooutil en arme et le lieu de lrsquooppressionen lieu de lrsquoinsurrectionrsquorsquo [lsquolsquothe forms of perception of the intolerablethe circulation of slogans and practical ideas of revolt the forms ofknowledge ndash manual and intellectual ndash that transform the tool into aweapon and the site of oppression into a site of insurrectionrsquorsquo] Threedirections of research were thematically sketched out the history offeminism of national minorities and of working-class emancipation25

The journal was likewise oriented against both a traditional movementhistory and the modern social history and history of mentalities promi-nently represented by the journal Annales which depicted the life of themasses as almost unchanging and relegated historical change either tostructural forces or to the elites This oppositional stance however wasnot designed to lead to any counter-history of spontaneous revolts againstorganized forms It was rather a matter of putting this opposition itself in

22 Les Revoltes logiques 1 (1975) inside front cover23 This slogan was particularly known through a book of interviews with Jean-Paul Sartreunder the same title conducted by two leading members of the Gauche proletarienne cf Jean-Paul Sartre Philippe Gavi and Pierre Victor (Benny Levy) On a raison de se revolterDiscussions (Paris 1974)24 Ranciere lsquolsquoLes scenes du peuplersquorsquo p 10 Davis Jacques Ranciere pp 39ff25 Collectif Revoltes logiques lsquolsquoLe Centre de Recherches sur les Ideologies de la Revolte(definition des objectifs et projets de recherches pour lrsquoannee 1975)rsquorsquo Le Doctrinal de SapienceCahiers drsquoenseignants de philosophie et drsquohistoire 1 (1975) pp 17ndash19 17 The fourth directionwas given as the history of peasant movements but this was seldom broached in the journalitself



question by confronting different versions of history (for example an officialmovement and local struggles)26

These goals were pursued by way of archive-based research initiativesaround half of these focusing on the emancipation of workers and womenbetween 1830 and the Paris Commune of 1871 being followed in fre-quency by contributions on the twentieth century and a few on theeighteenth27 The continuous representation of womenrsquos history wasexceptional in French historiography of that time ndash apart from Penelope ajournal of womenrsquos history founded in 197828 The essays of that timeoften presented a situation of concrete contradiction as shown by aglance at the first issue Here we see workers visiting the Paris worldexhibition of 1867 and scrutinizing the machines presented there ndash howwas the thinking of a class formed in this connection in the contradictoryfield of male wage-labour and female domestic labour How did feministsin the revolutionary year of 1848 seize the word and what arguments fora feminine moralization of society presented in this connection werepassed to and fro between bourgeois and proletarian women How didanarchists organize power for example the Confederacion Nacional delTrabajo (CNT) in Barcelona in 1936 Or as was pursued by oral historycalled temoignage what combatant ideal did young French communistsin the early 1920s develop after the October Revolution and how did thisideal intersect with the tradition of syndicalism29 The spectrum of arti-cles stretched from the deserters of Year II of the French Revolution whorefused to defend the Republic in the name of democratic arguments viathe legal status of artists the retail trade in printed matter and Frenchsettlement in Algeria in the nineteenth century through to the struggleagainst Soviet occupation in Afghanistan30

26 Davis Jacques Ranciere pp 40ff27 Ibid pp 37f28 Schottler lsquolsquoVon den lsquoAnnalesrsquo zum lsquoForum-Histoirersquorsquorsquo p 66 Cecile Dauphin lsquolsquoPenelope uneexperience militante dans le monde academiquersquorsquo Les Cahiers du CEDREF 10 (2001) pp 61ndash6829 Jacques Ranciere and Patrice Vauday lsquolsquoEn allant a lrsquoexpo Lrsquoouvrier sa femme et lesmachinesrsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 1 (1975) pp 5ndash22 translated into English as lsquolsquoOff to theExhibition The Worker His Wife and the Machinesrsquorsquo in Ranciere Staging the People pp64ndash88 Genevieve Fraisse lsquolsquoLes femmes libres de 48 Moralisme et feminismersquorsquo Les Revolteslogiques 1 (1975) pp 23ndash50 Jean Borreil lsquolsquoBarcelona 36 Lrsquoete rouge et noirrsquorsquo Les Revolteslogiques 1 (1975) pp 51ndash71 lsquolsquoLes lendemains drsquoOctobre La jeunesse ouvriere francaise entre lebolchevisme et la marginalite Entretien avec Maurice Jaquier et Georges Navelrsquorsquo Les Revolteslogiques 1 (1975) pp 72ndash9530 Jean Ruffet lsquolsquoLes deserteurs de lrsquoan IIrsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 4 (1977) pp 7ndash22 MariaIvens lsquolsquoLa liberte guidant lrsquoartistersquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 10 (1979) pp 52ndash94 idem lsquolsquoLaliberte guidant lrsquoartiste (deuxieme partie)rsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 11 (197980) pp 43ndash76 JeanBorreil lsquolsquoCirculation et rassemblementsrsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 7 (1978) pp 3ndash24 PhilippeHoyau lsquolsquoDes pauvres pour lrsquoAlgeriersquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 10 (1979) pp 3ndash28 Olivier RoylsquolsquoAfghanistan la guerre des paysansrsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 13 (198081) pp 50ndash64

68 Mischa Suter


When the journal of social history Le Mouvement social asked LesRevoltes logiques for a comment on the occasion of its one hundredth issueits editors took the opportunity to demarcate themselves from the project ofthe cumulative advance of knowledge that in their eyes characterized socialhistory Social history for Les Revoltes logiques served only to fine-tune thelsquolsquoalready knownrsquorsquo31 The editorial collective rejected the pressure of con-textualization which social history pursued and which in the last instanceonly reproduced the perspective of the masters Instead the politics of thearchive should be included in the investigation to show what in the traditionis kept silent Utterance should therefore not be taken as an outpouringof social circumstances that can be completely reconstructed but ratheras making a political break lsquolsquoCe qui nous interesse que les archives soientdes discours les lsquoideesrsquo des evenements que lrsquohistoire soit en chaque instantrupture questionnable seulement drsquoici seulement politiquementrsquorsquo [lsquolsquoWhatmatters to us is that archives should be discourses lsquoideasrsquo should be eventsthat history should be at each moment a rupture to be questioned only fromhere and now only politicallyrsquorsquo]32

lsquolsquoTo question history on the basis of revolt and the revolt on the basis ofhistoryrsquorsquo meant intervening politically with a polemical and archeologicalperspective33 In this connection the perspectives and methods of thisresearch were marked by forms of practice of the Left the search forcounter-knowledge that students pursued in their sojourns in the factoriesand the project of letting prisoners be heard which Foucaultrsquos Groupedrsquoinformation sur les prisons had pioneered In the following section we shalldeal with Les Revoltes logiquesrsquo relation to those practices which werelinked with the bywords etablissement and enquete

M I L I TA N T I N V E S T I G AT I O N B E T W E E N A R C H I V E

FA C T O RY A N D P R I S O N

In its founding manifesto the journal had linked the experience ofintellectuals in the factories with the reference back of contemporarystruggles to historical experience34 An important point of reference wasthe ten-month strike at the watch factory Lip in Besancon where workers

31 Collectif Revoltes logiques lsquolsquoDeux ou trois choses que lrsquohistorien social ne veut pas savoirrsquorsquoLe Mouvement social 100 (1977) pp 21ndash30 2632 Ibid p 30 (emphasis in original)33 Les Revoltes logiques 1 (1975) inside front cover Ranciere Les scenes du peuple p 15This procedure has a tense proximity with Foucaultrsquos genealogical perspective For a criticalexchange with Foucault cf lsquolsquoPouvoirs et strategies Entretien avec Michel Foucaultrsquorsquo LesRevoltes logiques 4 (1977) pp 89ndash97 On Foucaultrsquos principle of genealogy in the mid 1970s cfUlrich Brieler Die Unerbittlichkeit der Historizitat Foucault als Historiker (Cologne [etc]1998) pp 345ndash40134 Collectif Revoltes logiques lsquolsquoCentre de Recherches sur les Ideologiesrsquorsquo p 17



had resumed production for themselves35 Self-management (autogestion)at Lip meant lsquolsquoa slap in the face and a lessonrsquorsquo for the Maoists36 who weresimply not present in this path-breaking strike ndash a historical study showedseventeen actively producing strikes in the immediate wake of Lip37 AtLip according to Les Revoltes logiques old forms of struggle wererediscovered ndash such as the guiding idea of the association of producers38 ndashthat the CGT trade-union federation the Communist Party and theMaoists had all let be forgotten

Through the interest in modes of counter-knowledge and the encounterbetween different modes of speech Les Revoltes logiques was linked withthe etablissement movement The final issue from 1981 contained theautobiographical reports of two former etablis the thematic focus wason politiques du voyage what Ranciere later called lsquolsquothe core politicalexperience of our generationrsquorsquo39 A lsquolsquojourneyrsquorsquo of this kind into the factorywas made in France between 1967 and 1989 by some two or threethousand individuals of whom around one-third were women40 Retro-spectively the etablissement movement has been frequently categorized asakin to scouting or para-religious sacrifice41 That assessment whichaccording to the historian Donald Reid followed the narrative of lostCatholic faith reduced the complex motivational situation of the individ-ual militants to a simple model and obscures more than it illuminates42

Factory work out of political conviction was generally no fleetingepisode Out of a sample of 283 etablis who were questioned 45 per centhad stayed for 6 years or more (22 per cent longer than 10) 31 per centbetween 2 and 5 years and 24 per cent less than 2 years43 The origin of

35 For an analysis demonstrating the significance of Lip and focusing on the CFDT trade-union federation cf Pierre Saint-Germain and Michel Souletie lsquolsquoLa raison syndicalersquorsquo LesRevoltes logiques special issue lsquolsquoLes lauriers de mairsquorsquo (1978) pp 26ndash4836 Xavier Vigna LrsquoInsubordination ouvriere dans les annees 68 Essai drsquohistoire politique desusines (Rennes 2007) p 29837 Ibid p 10938 Collectif Revoltes Logiques lsquolsquoCentre de Recherches sur les Ideologiesrsquorsquo p 1739 Marc Parinaud lsquolsquoA travers les forteressesrsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 1415 (1981) pp 86ndash95Pierre Saint-Germain lsquolsquoLrsquoouvrier amateurrsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 1415 (1981) pp 96ndash115Jacques Ranciere Short Voyages to the Land of The People James B Swenson (transl) (StanfordCA 2003) p 2 originally published as Court voyages au pays du peuple (Paris 1990)40 Marnix Dressen De lrsquoamphi a lrsquoetabli Les etudiants maoıstes a lrsquousine (1967ndash1989) (Paris1999) p 11 Donald Reid lsquolsquoEtablissement Working in the Factory to Make Revolution inFrancersquorsquo Radical History Review 88 (2004) pp 83ndash111 9041 The comprehensive sociological investigation of Marnix Dressen thus follows the inter-pretative model of a lsquolsquopolitical religionrsquorsquo Cf for example idem De lrsquo amphi a lrsquoetabli pp 175ffFor a critique of Dressenrsquos theoretical framework cf Michelle Zancarini-Fournel lsquolsquoA proposdes militants etablisrsquorsquo Mouvements 18 (2001) pp 148ndash15242 Reid lsquolsquoEtablissementrsquorsquo pp 100ff43 Dressen De lrsquo amphi a lrsquoetabli p 254

70 Mischa Suter


the movement lay in an enquete campaign44 In summer 1967 some fortymembers of the UJC(M-L) following Mao Zedongrsquos motto lsquolsquono investi-gation no right to speakrsquorsquo45 began to question port factory and ruralworkers46 In MayndashJune 1968 the organization was surprised by eventsan ouvrierist position had led them to underestimate the student revoltand they proved incapable of intervening in the greatest strike movementin French history47 As a result the UJC(M-L) broke up with some of itsmembers forming the Gauche proletarienne along with others from theMouvement du 22-Mars A core tenet of the grouprsquos politics ndash accordingto Jacques Ranciere a member of it until 1972 ndash was the demand toabolish the separation between mental and manual labour48

There had been analysis of everyday factory life from a perspective ofstruggle long before the Maoist movement And in France after 1968 thiswas by no means pursued only by Maoists The originally Trotskyistgroup around the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie which had increasinglydeveloped council-democratic autonomous positions had pursuedinvestigations in the 1950s in car factories and among white-collarworkers49 Its point of departure was that only attention to experienceconceived as the link between objective relationships and subjectiveagency made it possible to pursue the movements of the class

The post-1968 enquetes shared the concern not to objectify workers asa sociological lsquolsquoobject of investigationrsquorsquo but to use research as a moment ofintervention for their ability to act50 The Gauche proletarienne took this

44 Virginie Linhart Volontaires pour lrsquousine Vies drsquoetablis 1967ndash1977 (Paris 2010) pp 31ndash37Marnix Dressen lsquolsquoLe lancement du mouvement drsquoetablissement a la recherche de la classeperduersquorsquo in Rene Mourinaux (ed) 1968 exploration du mai francais 2 vols II Les acteurs(Paris 1992) pp 229ndash24645 Mao Tse-Tung lsquolsquoPreface and Postscript to Rural Surveys (March and April 1941)rsquorsquo in idem SelectedWorks 5 vols (Beijing 1965) III pp 11ndash16 13 The expression lsquolsquosrsquoetablirrsquorsquo comes from a further text ofMao Zedong that deals with lsquolsquothe question of the integration of the intellectuals with the masses ofworkers and peasantsrsquorsquo A section of the intellectuals Mao says lsquolsquogo to the factories or villagesrsquorsquo wheremany lsquolsquocan stay for a few months conducting investigations and making friendsrsquorsquo and others lsquolsquocan stayand live there for a considerable time say two or three years or even longer this may be called lsquosettlingdownrsquo [srsquoetablir]rsquorsquo idem Speech at the Chinese Communist Partyrsquos National Conference on PropagandaWork (12 March 1957) in idem Collected Works 5 vols (Beijing 1977) V pp 422ndash435 42646 For a UJC(M-L) document that stresses the centrality of the enquete in Maoist politics cflsquolsquoEdifions en France un parti communiste de lrsquoepoque de la Revolution culturellersquorsquo Garde rouge6 (May 1967) reprinted in Patrick Kessel Le mouvement lsquomaoıstersquo en France 2 vols (Paris 1972)I pp 250ndash25747 Fields Trotskyism and Maoism pp 93 100ff Wolin Wind from the East pp 133ff48 Ranciere Althusserrsquos Lesson pp 221ff49 The following draws on Andrea Gabler Antizipierte Autonomie Zur Theorie und Praxis derGruppe lsquolsquoSocialisme ou Barbariersquorsquo (1949ndash1967) (Hanover 2009) pp 125ff Reid lsquolsquoEtablissementrsquorsquop 87ff names as forerunners of the Maoists the reportages of Jacques Valdour in the 1920s andSimone Weil as well as the early movement of worker priests during World War II50 Ross May rsquo68 pp 109ff



idea further and in contrast to the UJC(M-L) demoted analysis farbehind a more activist politics51 It sought to endow workers with theirown voice52 The search for other forms of representation and the interestin local and concrete conditions went together with rejection of the mythof a transcendental working class This also meant abandoning certainideas lsquolsquoJrsquoy ai rencontre ce que jrsquoavais cherche lrsquoechec de mes discoursrsquorsquo[lsquolsquoI found there what I was looking for the failure of my speechesrsquorsquo] oneetablie at Peugeot-Sochaux recalled from her first factory experience inearly 196853 Robert Linhart a leading member of the UJC(M-L) whohad worked as a semi-skilled worker (ouvrier specialise OS) at Citroen-Choisy wrote in his memoir LrsquoEtabli (1978)

In the outside world the lsquolsquoestablishmentrsquorsquo appears spectacular the papers make itinto quite a legend Seen from the works itrsquos not very important in the long runEveryone who works here has a complex individual story often more fascinatingand more embroiled than that of the student who has temporarily turned workerThe middle classes always imagine they have a monopoly on personal historiesHow ridiculous They have a monopoly on speaking in public thatrsquos all54

The prisonersrsquo movement constituted another field in which thecounter-knowledge of the enquete could bear results In late May 1970the Gauche proletarienne and other groups were banned and in summer awave of arrests followed As Daniel Defert later recalled Jacques Rancierecontacted him with a view to building a support cell55 Initially the prisonersstruggled for the status of political prisoner following the model of thefighters in the Algerian war and organized two hunger strikes When Fou-cault at the request of his partner Defert in early February 1971 announcedthe founding of the Groupe drsquoinformation sur les prisons (GIP) its orien-tation had significantly changed The organization operated as an anonymousnetwork behind three prominent representatives who included besidesFoucault himself the former Resistance fighter and publisher of Esprit Jean-Marie Domenach and the historian of antiquity Pierre Vidal-Naquet whohad exposed the practice of torture by the French army in Algeria The groupbegan to problematize the prison institution as such

The GIP intended to confine itself strictly to the transmission ofinformation and give prisoners themselves a voice The key concept forthis was intolerable This was not only the title of a series of pamphlets in

51 Linhart Volontaires pour lrsquousine pp 43ndash77 Vigna LrsquoInsubordination ouvriere pp 291ndash30052 Ibid pp 287ff53 Cited after Dressen De lrsquoamphi a lrsquoetabli p 18054 Robert Linhart The Assembly Line Margaret Crosland (transl) (Amherst MA 1981)p 7655 Daniel Defert lsquolsquoLrsquoemergence drsquoun nouveau front Les prisonsrsquorsquo in Philippe ArtieresLaurent Quero and Michelle Zancarini-Fournel (eds) Le Groupe drsquoinformation sur les prisonsArchives drsquoune lutte 1970ndash1972 (Paris 2003) pp 315ndash326 316

72 Mischa Suter


which their research was published but also their general theme56

According to Danielle Ranciere the enquete intolerance combined twodistinct strands bourgeois-philanthropic investigation of the living con-ditions of the lower classes in the nineteenth century and the Maoistinvestigation of factory agitation and in this way developed an originalform of production of knowledge57 In this way discussion about con-ditions in prison was tackled not from an external scientific and social-reforming standard but rather from the fact that prisoners clearly did nottolerate these conditions and fought against them This determined theimpetus of the first enquete on which Claude Liscia and ChristineMartineau were the main collaborators of Danielle Rancierersquos whoalready had experience with factory enquetes58

The members of the GIP sometimes distributed questionnaires to visitingrelatives on Saturday mornings outside the prison gates In the first enquetethe group stressed that it was not conducting a sociological investigation itsaim was to let those affected by the prison system speak for themselveslsquolsquoNotre enquete nrsquoest pas faite pour accumuler des connaissances mais pouraccroıtre notre intolerance et en faire une intolerance activersquorsquo [lsquolsquoOur investi-gation is not designed to build up knowledge but to increase our intoleranceand make it an active intolerancersquorsquo]59 This lsquolsquoactive intolerancersquorsquo took place in anincreasingly heated atmosphere In September 1971 two prisoners attemptingto break out of Clairvaux took a woman nurse and a male guard as hostagesand killed them The Minister of Justice demanded a collective penalty andprohibited the reception of Christmas parcels in prisons throughout Franceprovoking massive insurrections60 As Danielle Ranciere recalled thoseinvolved had to demand rights for the prisoners even if at the same time ndashfrom a Marxist perspective ndash the concept of human rights was rejected61 Themodel of the enquete was in this way stripped of global claims It would be

56 Intolerable 1 Enquete dans 20 prisons (May 1971) reprinted in Artieres Groupe drsquoinfor-mation sur les prisons p 8057 Danielle Ranciere lsquolsquoBreve histoire du Groupe drsquoinformation sur les prisons (GIP)1971ndash1972rsquorsquo Mana Revue de sociologie et drsquoanthropologie 5 (1998) pp 221ndash225 222ffPhilippe Artieres lsquolsquoMiliter ensemble Entretien avec Danielle Rancierersquorsquo in idem et al (eds)Michel Foucault (Paris 2011) pp 53ndash5658 Defert lsquolsquoLrsquoemergence drsquoun nouveau frontrsquorsquo p 31859 JrsquoAccuse 3 (15 March 1971) reprinted in Artieres Groupe drsquoinformation sur les prisonsp 52 (emphasis in original)60 Defert lsquolsquoLrsquoemergence drsquoun nouveau frontrsquorsquo pp 322ff On the background and conditions inthe Clairvaux prison cf an article that compares an analysis of the contemporary situation witharchival material from around the turn of the century Stephane Douailler and PatriceVermeren lsquolsquoMutineries a Clairvauxrsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 6 (1977) pp 77ndash9561 Danielle Ranciere lsquolsquoBref histoire du GIPrsquorsquo p 225 idem cited after Julian Bourg FromRevolution to Ethics May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought (Montreal [etc] 2007)p 93 idem lsquolsquoLes contributions accidentelles du marxisme au renouveau des droits de lrsquohommeen France dans lrsquoapres-68rsquorsquo Actuel Marx 32 (2002) pp 125ndash138 131



effective only in local circumstances and was confined to the description ofconcrete discordances without this leading on to reformist demands

Where then were the points of contact and parallel perspectives betweenthe model of the enquete and the historiography of Les Revoltes logiquesThe GIP sought to show who it was that spoke in the conditions of the penalsystem who was reduced to silence and how something was brought tolight that had previously remained invisible The mechanisms by whichvoices emerged also formed a major interest of Les Revoltes logiques Theabandonment ndash often linked with disappointments ndash of a class conceptburdened with a philosophy of history62 as experienced by the etabli(e)slikewise lay at the origin of the kaleidoscopic archival work of the journalBut at a practical level too Les Revoltes logiques took up the experiencesof movements printing declarations of solidarity with political prisonersanalysing penal justice or reporting on strikes under way63

A special issue of 1978 with the title Les lauriers de mai ou les chemins dupouvoir 1968ndash1978 was devoted to the transformations of the Left itselfThis material was to have appeared in Les Temps modernes but an article byJacques and Danielle Ranciere dealing with the trajectory of intellectualsafter 1968 was rejected Benny Levy of Les Temps modernes at one time aleading exponent of the Gauche proletarienne must have seen his owndevelopment attacked in this commentary on the sharp right turn of thenouveaux philosophes64 The Rancieres discuss the double revolt of 1968 intheir contribution If an egalitarian space arose for a moment throughthe connection between the factory revolt and that in the universities themovement of etablissements posited a contradictory ideal the self-extirpationof intellectuals Proletarianization according to the Rancieres would also beexperienced as an individually liberating break To leave academic careeriststhe diligent concern for lsquolsquothe latest epistemological or semiological shading ofMarxismrsquorsquo and instead immerse themselves lsquolsquoin the reality of the factoryrsquorsquowas far from being lacking in consolation65

62 For Ranciere the disappointments and subsequent accounts of the etabli(e)s were also aresult of the notion that the working class was shaped by capital in such a way that anyone whorecounted the social conditions of exploitation had lsquolsquograspedrsquorsquo their kernel cf Jacques RancierelsquolsquoLrsquousine nostalgiquersquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 13 (1980) pp 89ndash97 9063 Douailler and Vermeren lsquolsquoMutineries a Clairvauxrsquorsquo Collectif Revoltes logiques lsquolsquoPour MarcSislanrsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 7 (1977) p 2 Pierre Saint Germain and Michel Souletie lsquolsquoLevoyage a Palentersquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 7 (1977) pp 67ndash80 Stephane Douailler and PatriceVermeren lsquolsquoLa strategie judiciaire hier et aujourdrsquohui Entretien avec Jean Lapeyrie du comitedrsquoaction prisons-justice (CAPJ) et Jacques Verges avocat ex-defenseur du FLNrsquorsquo Les Revolteslogiques 13 (198081) pp 64ndash8164 Ross May rsquo68 p 13265 Danielle Ranciere and Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoLa legende des philosophes (les intellectuels et latraversee du gauchisme)rsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques special issue lsquolsquoLes lauriers de mairsquorsquo (1978)pp 7ndash25 14

74 Mischa Suter


Yet the rejection of academic intellectuals involved a further figure thatof the militant leader who claimed to be a transparent medium for thelsquolsquovoice of the peoplersquorsquo The GIP contributed to this turn by declaringinformation as such to be a weapon The nouveaux philosophes drove thisspiral still further While in the name of a suffering declared as absolutelypowerless they fought against the lsquolsquoMarxist master-thinkersrsquorsquo they onceagain enthroned the intellectuals ndash themselves66 The special issue onLes lauriers du mai was a self-critical questioning of many of the con-ceptions from which the metamorphosis of forms of left practice andfigures of thought proceeded without maintaining an underlying essencefrom which this later development was derived And yet the defeat ofgauchisme also affected Les Revoltes logiques ndash the cessation of thejournal coincided with the election of Mitterrand in 1981 which signifiedthe disappearance of a certain constellation of the Left Like other historicalinitiatives Les Revoltes logiques remained a project tied to the situation ofthe 1970s and its thematic strands were now pursued further by most of theauthors involved individually67

F R O M D I S P L A C E D T H I N K I N G T O T H E P O E T I C S

O F K N O W L E D G E

In his book La nuit des proletaires (1981) Ranciere had attempted to lookat the connection between mental and manual labour ndash a basic theme ofgauchisme ndash from the opposite direction he said in a later interview Thetheme was no longer the proletarianizing of intellectuals but ratherintellectual appropriation on the part of workers68 His these drsquoetat waspresented as the result of a series of displacements workersrsquo historyinstead of philosophy but instead of a social history of changing forms ofwork organizations or cultural practices a history of the collision ofarguments and fantasies that occupied a few hundred workers between1830 and 185169

66 For a debate with the nouvelle philosophie cf Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoLa bergere au Goulag(sur lsquola cusiniere et le mangeur drsquohommesrsquo)rsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 1 (1975) pp 96ndash111 idemlsquolsquoReponse a Levyrsquorsquo Le Nouvel observateur 31 July 1977 translated into English as lsquolsquoReply toLevyrsquorsquo Telos 33 (1977) pp 119ndash12267 Ross May rsquo68 pp 136ff68 Francois Ewald lsquolsquoQursquoest-ce que la classe ouvriere Entretien avec Jacques RancierersquorsquoMagazine litteraire 175 (1981) pp 64ndash66 65 Reid lsquolsquoIntroductionrsquorsquo p xxxi69 Ranciere Nights of Labor p vii The working title of the these was originally lsquolsquoLa for-mation de la pensee ouvriere en Francersquorsquo and finally lsquolsquoLe proletaire et son doublersquorsquo For a conciseidea of the line of argument see Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoThe Proletarian and His Double Or TheUnknown Philosopherrsquorsquo in idem Staging the People pp 21ndash33 21 originally published aslsquolsquoLe proletaire et son double ou le philosophe inconnursquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 13 (198081)pp 4ndash12 4



At the start of this enterprise lay the intention to trace the thinking of aclass before Marxism had transformed this thinking Ranciere proceededfrom the assumption that this thinking was to be found in utopian reli-gions and forms of plebeian sociability In the introduction to the col-lection of sources La Parole ouvriere published in 1976 a unity of theclass anchored in social practices had still been postulated70

This idea that the reciprocal working of forms of struggle and culturalidentity would form a unitary thinking as a class was one that Rancieresubsequently abandoned71 For him the question now was one of individualbreakthroughs in which workers discarded a simple affinity declared to belsquolsquonaturalrsquorsquo people who instead of sleeping at night and reproducing theirlabour-power wrote poems and invented philosophies This shift of focusfrom the class as a collective in struggle to personal emancipation initiallymeant focusing on a structure of thinking through the utterances of workersthemselves The theories of the Saint-Simonians Fourierists or Icarian emi-grant communities were not to be investigated by the explanation of pro-grammes but rather by way of dialogues and stories This procedure departedfrom the priority given by social history to social conditions or culturalpractices Ranciere intended not to lsquolsquodisqualifyrsquorsquo this lsquolsquoverbiagersquorsquo brush it awayin favour of a deeper reality but to follow the windings of an alien thinking72

Freeing the speech of the actors therefore did not mean maintaining that thisthinking had an authentic core What is made visible is not a primordialsubject but an ever new and different picture of working men and women73

At an initial level the constituting of a lsquolsquoproletarian subjectrsquorsquo took placein opposition to the bourgeois image of the lsquolsquodangerous classesrsquorsquo a stresson pride in onersquos trade and the idea of a civilization of producers so as torefute the bourgeoisiersquos accusation of lsquolsquobarbarismrsquorsquo74 This was strategicthinking that in one minute emphasized the community of all mankindacross class divisions75 and in the next a separatist class discipline76 Thediscursive figure of emancipation was also open to a repressive mode ofdeployment a traditional strand (one of many such) of lsquolsquopraise for labourrsquorsquocan be traced through to the lsquolsquonational revolutionrsquorsquo of the Vichy regime77

70 Alain Faure and Jacques Ranciere (ed) La parole ouvriere 1830ndash1851 (Paris 2007 firstpublished 1976) 1771 Ranciere lsquolsquoPostfacersquorsquo (2007) in ibid p 33972 Ranciere Nights of Labor p 1173 Ibid p 1074 Ranciere lsquolsquoThe Proletarian and His Doublersquorsquo p 2275 Ranciere Nights of Labor chs 5 776 Ibid ch 1077 A complex genealogy from a minority position of syndicalism through to Vichy is drawnby Ranciere in lsquolsquoFrom Pelloutier to Hitler Trade Unionism and Collaborationrsquorsquo in idemStaging the People originally published as lsquolsquoDe Pelloutier a Hitler Syndicalisme et collaborationrsquorsquoLes Revoltes logiques 4 (1977) pp 23ndash61

76 Mischa Suter


As a response to this view the nouveaux philosophes introduced theirsubstitute concept of the plebe which postulated the muteness ndash or thecarnavelesque laughter ndash of the powerless against an all-pervasive power78

But another path was also open and Ranciere maintained that it was thecarpenter and philosopher Louis-Gabriel Gauny (1806ndash1889) who hadshown him this79 Gauny had thematized proletarian existence as a dailytheft of time by labour thus leading to a second level of investigationRanciere found in Gauny an autonomous philosophical reflection on theuncertainty of the proletarian condition marked by lsquolsquoBrownian movementsthat constantly affect precarious and transitory forms of existencersquorsquo80

The starting-point of Gaunyrsquos writing was not the gradual formation ofconsciousness but the demand to be someone else to take leave ofascribed relations This led to a singular production of meaning on thepart of someone who did not speak in the name of others and not even inhis own ndash but wrote simply so as no longer to be identical with himselfCentral in this leave-taking was the encounter with the other ndash in Gaunyrsquoscase the Saint-Simonian missionaries and poets of bourgeois origin Themeeting between working men and women who no longer wanted to besuch and bourgeois who saw the dawning of a new age among theworkers enabled personal emancipation

These emancipations however could not be generalized on thegrounds of a double impossibility They were beset by constant disillusionabout lsquolsquoclass brothersrsquorsquo who would not be convinced or who sought onlymaterial support from the associations And they experienced mis-understandings with the bourgeois lsquolsquobrothers in spiritrsquorsquo who expectedappropriate proletarian behaviour on the part of workers lsquolsquo[a]lways bewhat you arersquorsquo Victor Hugo told a worker poet81 According to Ranciere

And the argument would be that it is in this spiral of impossibility that a certainimage and identity could develop giving body to the discourse of workersrsquoemancipation that this would be the discourse of the working class or workersrsquomovement matching the actual inability of its bearers to find the principle oftheir own identification82

78 Originally a much-discussed figure of gauchisme Andre Glucksmannrsquos lsquolsquoplebersquorsquo wasdeployed sharply against the left cf idem La Cuisiniere et le mangeur drsquohomme Essai sur lesrapports entre lrsquoEtat le marxisme et les camps de concentration (Paris 1975) Michael ScottChristofferson French Intellectuals against the Left The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s(New York [etc] 2004) ch 2 and for his argument against Glucksmann Ranciere lsquolsquoLa bergereau goulagrsquorsquo79 Idem lsquolsquoThe Proletarian and His Doublersquorsquo p 25 For a selection of Gaunyrsquos writings seeLouis Gabriel Gauny Le philosophe plebeian Textes presentes et rassembles par JacquesRanciere (Paris 1983)80 Ranciere Nights of Labor p 3181 Idem lsquolsquoThe Proletarian and His Doublersquorsquo p 25 idem Nights of Labor p 1382 Idem lsquolsquoThe Proletarian and His Doublersquorsquo p 28



Politics makes its appearance in Rancierersquos work by circumventing theboundaries between the social and the ideological the scientific and theliterary historiography and philosophy La nuit des proletaires traces anarrative of equality as the intellectual division of labour is rejected andthe transgression of philosophizing workers is given pride of placeRancierersquos writing plays on complicity with historical actors and letsstrangeness turn into surprising familiarity83 The bookrsquos lack of actualityand the lsquolsquoimpossiblersquorsquo actualizings that its reading may suggest aim at anlsquolsquoestrangement effectrsquorsquo in its own political present

Surprise interested acceptance but also marked rejection characterizedthe effect of La nuit des proletaires in the field of labour history84 In adebate with specialists on the question as to how far professional skill andworker militancy hung together Ranciere underlined as key pointsquestions of equality and of the effect of words ideas and feelings in thegenesis of the labour movement In an essay in International Labor andWorking-Class History Ranciere challenged the view that handicraft tradi-tion and pride in work were constitutive of the early workersrsquo movementseeing these rather as a subsequent invention of tradition on the part of trade-union leaders Labour historians tended to short-circuit political statementsby workers with working practices and in this way asserted a homogeneousworkersrsquo culture instead of concerning themselves with individual encoun-ters with other cultures To emphasize identitarian difference threatenedinvoluntarily to lead to exoticizing or promoting an lsquolsquointellectual racismrsquorsquo85

In response to participants in the debate especially William Sewell Jr andChristopher Johnson who both stressed capitalist restructuring Ranciere

83 Idem Nights of Labor pp 78ndash87 Ranciere further radicalized this principle of complicityin his account of the views of the pedagogue Joseph Jacotot (1770ndash1840) Jacotot postulated adeep equality of intelligence amongst all people taking this equality as the starting point of hismethod of instruction (instead of a goal to be strived for) designed to allow illiterate parents tohelp their children to read and write Ranciere explained this maxim of equality as a prerequisiteof emancipation the abolition of boundaries and a re-appropriation of the world JacquesRanciere The Ignorant Schoolmaster Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation Kristin Ross(transl and introd) (Stanford CA 1991) first published as Le maıtre ignorant Cinq lecons surlrsquoemancipation intellectuelle (Paris 1987)84 It is only possible here to give two examples of a fascinated acceptance or argued rejectionFor the first cf Donald Reid lsquolsquoReflections on Labor History and Languagersquorsquo in LenardR Berlanstein (ed) Rethinking Labor History Essays on Discourse and Class Analysis (UrbanaIL [etc] 1993) pp 39ndash54 An in-depth but definitely negative discussion is in BryanD Palmer Descent into Discourse The Reification of Language and the Writing of SocialHistory (Philadelphia PA 1990) pp 125ndash128 cf also Palmerrsquos review of Nights of Labor inLabourLe Travail 27 (1991) pp 340ndash34285 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoThe Myth of the Artisan Critical Reflections on a Category of SocialHistoryrsquorsquo International Labor and Working-Class History 24 (1983) pp 1ndash16 10 The sametext is reproduced in Steven L Kaplan and Cynthia J Koepp (eds) Work in France Repre-sentations Meaning Organization and Practice (Ithaca NY [etc] 1986) pp 317ndash334

78 Mischa Suter


insisted that in his view the demand for participation and expansion of sociallife bordered on workersrsquo militancy86

Two paths are opened by Rancierersquos postulate of a genesis of workersrsquothinking from a project of dis-identification and an impossible identifi-cation a critique of social and historical sciences that assigns the lowerclasses their proper place and an attention to aesthetics as in the lastanalysis the emancipation of working men and women amounts first andforemost to an aesthetic revolution87

Exemplary for the critique of the social sciences was the example ofPierre Bourdieu whom Ranciere particularly attacked88 Interest in mixedforms and areas of contact between the classes clashed with the demarcationBourdieursquos twin concept of habitus and distinction implied which ndashaccording to Ranciere ndash eliminated zones of exchange89 Already in anarticle of 1978 on the subject of the Paris pleasure district in the nine-teenth century Ranciere had emphasized the salience of a mixed culturalspace ndash a thesis that became central in La nuit des proletaires90 With theconcept of habitus the singular seizure of speech that characterized thepoetizing workers of La nuit des proletaires was rationalized away91

Ranciere found that Bourdieu ndash similarly in this respect to Althusser ndashpursued a discourse of order a lsquolsquoscience of right opinionrsquorsquo92 Ambiguity

86 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoA Replyrsquorsquo International Labor and Working-Class History 25 (1984)pp 42ndash46 42ff 4587 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoAfterword to the English-Language Edition (2002)rsquorsquo in The Philosopherand His Poor Andrew Parker (ed and introd) John Drury Corrine Oster and Andrew Parker(transl) (Durham NC 2002) pp 219ndash227 219ff 226 This point is made more clearly in theafterword to the German edition cf Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoNachwort (2006)rsquorsquo in idem DerPhilosoph und seine Armen Richard Steurer (transl) (Vienna 2010) p 296 We cannot deal herewith this path leading on to aesthetics but only indicate that this is the starting-point ofRancierersquos concern with aesthetics as a potential for a new arrangement of the sensible lsquolsquoPoliticsis aesthetic in that it makes visible what had been excluded from a perceptual field and in that itmakes audible what used to be inaudible [y] Politics is completely an affair of the antagonisticsubjectivation of the division of the sensiblersquorsquo Ranciere lsquolsquoAfterword to the English-LanguageEditionrsquorsquo p 226 Cf idem The Politics of Aesthetics The Distribution of the Sensible GabrielRockhill (transl and introd) (London [etc] 2004) originally published as Le partage dusensible Esthetique et politique (Paris 2000) Revoltes logiques (ed) Esthetiques du peuple thisalready explicitly draws on Friedrich Schillerrsquos lsquolsquoOn the Aesthetic Education of Mankindrsquorsquoa text that Ranciere repeatedly refers to88 It is beyond the scope of the present article to judge the extent to which this critique ispertinent but only how it fits into Rancierersquos project For a comparative undertaking of thiskind cf Nordmann BourdieuRanciere Toscano lsquolsquoAnti-Sociology and Its Limitsrsquorsquo89 Ranciere Philosopher and His Poor p 18990 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoGood Times Or Pleasure at the Barriere in idem Staging the Peoplepp 175ndash232 originally published as lsquolsquoLe bon temps ou la barriere des plaisirsrsquorsquo Les Revolteslogiques 7 (1978) pp 25ndash6691 Ranciere lsquolsquoThe Proletarian and his Doublersquorsquo p 3092 Ranciere Philosopher and His Poor pp 166ff



and heresy can only appear in this context as a deficient misunderstandingof the rules of the game93

According to Ranciere Bourdieu deploys a radical critique to illustratethe radical unchangeability of conditions pointing out relations ofdomination yet claiming that the concealment of these relations is abso-lute This is done by the tautology according to which dominationfunctions only through ignorance an ignorance that domination itselfproduces by its reproduction as shown by the example of educationFirstly the university remains closed to children of the people becausethey cannot see the real reasons why it is closed to them and secondlythe reason why they cannot recognize these real reasons is a structuraleffect of the system that excludes them94 All that remains for thesociologist is a banal lsquolsquoethics of suspicionrsquorsquo which dispenses with expla-nation and does not prove anything more than that the dispossessed aredispossessed95

Rancierersquos polemic against Bourdieu was vehement but seems to havesupplied the foundations for a stronger deconstructive enterprise whichinvestigated the necessity of the assignment of social place in historicalscience Les noms de lrsquohistoire (1992) focused on the question of theway in which modern historiography raised its speech to the status ofscience96 According to Arlette Farge the historical profession reacted tothis attempt at a lsquolsquopoetics of knowledgersquorsquo partly with organized silencepartly with angry rejection97 What Ranciere investigated here were theliterary rules and procedures with which history took up its precariousposition between narrative and science98 It did this by conceptualizing itsnewly discovered historical subject ndash the masses ndash in a particular way ForRanciere modern historical science had found ways to make the massesvisible in history ndash but at the price of keeping them silent It tamed thelsquolsquoexcess of wordsrsquorsquo of the poor who as soon as they began to speak lefttheir assigned domain99 Modern history-writing ceased to consider onlythe lsquolsquogreatrsquorsquo events of the rulers yet it did so by purging history of all

93 Ibid p 186 On cultural allodoxia ie lsquolsquoall the mistaken identifications and false recog-nitionsrsquorsquo which lead people lsquolsquoto take light opera for lsquoserious musicrsquo popularization for sciencean lsquoimitationrsquo for the genuine articlersquorsquo see Pierre Bourdieu Distinction A Social Critique of theJudgement of Taste Richard Nice (transl) (London [etc] 2003 first published 1979) p 32394 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoLrsquoEthique de la sociologiersquorsquo in Collectif Revoltes logiques Empire dusociologue pp 13ndash36 28ff idem Philosopher and His Poor pp 171ff95 Idem lsquolsquoEthique de la sociologiersquorsquo p 3396 Idem The Names of History On the Poetics of Knowledge Hassan Melehy (transl)foreword by Hayden White (Minneapolis MN 1994) first published as Les noms de lrsquohistoireEssai de poetique du savoir (Paris 1992)97 Arlette Farge lsquolsquoLrsquoHistoire comme avenementrsquorsquo Critique 601602 (1997) pp 461ndash466 46498 Ranciere Names of History pp 7ff99 Ibid pp 16ff 24ff

80 Mischa Suter


events altogether ndash of the countless incidents that involve those speakingindividuals that history is made of100

At the origin of modern historiography stands Jules Michelet whotransposed the Revolution ndash the event par excellence ndash into an epicInstead of the revoltrsquos confusion of voices he had a new collective subjectspeak ndash the Nation ndash and depicted the surrender of the people to theNation without allowing the bearers of this surrender to speak forthemselves The modern historical science of the age of the masses hasperfected this achievement in moderation In place of events it puts thefacts conjunctures and structures of the longue duree101 The spatializedhistory of Annales manages to allocate each speech a place This explainsthe history of mentalitiesrsquo interest in heresies as a legacy of Micheletrsquoshistoriography Micheletrsquos book La sorciere (1862) had literally domes-ticated the witch as guardian of the hearth in popular belief who wasonly diabolized by the churchrsquos drive for domination Heresy ndash and asfurther examples Ranciere cites among others Emmanuel Le Roy Laduriersquosvillage of Montaillou and Carlo Ginzburgrsquos miller in The Cheese and theWorms ndash is explained as provincial religion tied to tradition and anchored fastin its territory102

H E R E T I C A L H I S T O RY A N D I T S N O N - A C T U A L I T Y

What then would be the approach of a heretical historiography accordingto Ranciere103 It has first of all to acknowledge the excess of words in themodern age when breaches in social order lead to previously unknownnew communities such as lsquolsquothat class that is no longer a class but thelsquodissolution of all classesrsquorsquorsquo (Karl Marx)104 This leads to identificationswith empty names lsquolsquoProletarianrsquorsquo Blanqui answered when the judgeasked him his profession105 In Rancierersquos political philosophy this isthe starting point for the conceptualization of politics as event whichthen happens when those without part articulate their part ndash a paradoxthat puts the entire order in question106 The subjectivity being con-stituted here must grasp itself as generality and invoke a universality

100 Farge lsquolsquoHistoire comme avenementrsquorsquo101 Two of the seven chapters are devoted to Fernand Braudelrsquos narrative mode102 Ranciere Names of History pp 67ff Nostalgia heritage and regionalism were problemsthat repeatedly occupied Les Revoltes logiques Cf Jean Borreil lsquolsquoDes politiques nostalgiques(Montaillou village occitan ndash Bretons de Plozevet ndash Le cheval drsquoorgeil ndash Etre un peuple enmarge)rsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 3 (1976) pp 87ndash105 Philippe Hoyau lsquolsquoLrsquoannee du patrimoineou la societe de conservationrsquorsquo Les Revoltes logiques 12 (1980) pp 70ndash78103 For example the title of ch 6 of Ranciere Names of History lsquolsquoA Heretical Historyrsquorsquo104 Ranciere Names of History pp 92 34ff105 Ibid p 93106 On the imbrication of class struggle and politics cf Ranciere Disagreement pp 18ff 83ff



Historiographically this is lsquolsquothe age of hazardous subjectificationrsquorsquo thatforms the celebrated opening scene of EP Thompsonrsquos The Making ofthe English Working Class ndash the London Corresponding Society foundedby nine workers in 1792 which resolved lsquolsquo[t]hat the number of ourmembers be unlimitedrsquorsquo107

Thompson according to Ranciere described the genesis of the workingclass on the basis of a process of thought as the appropriation of referencetexts and the reinterpretation of writings In order to explain this origin itwas not enough to locate it in popular culture and sociability Thestruggling class was rather lsquolsquothe invention of a name for the picking up ofseveral speech-acts that affirm or challenge a symbolic configuration ofrelations between the order of discourse and the order of states ofaffairsrsquorsquo108 Modernity under the sign of a break demanded a specificpoetics for historiography This referred to the relationship of historicalscience to time and therefore to change109 what Ranciere subsequentlycontinued in reflections on anachronies and anachronisms directedagainst the idea of epochs as closed spaces of thinking

The Annales co-founder Lucien Febvre in his classic 1942 study onlsquolsquothe problem of unbelief in the sixteenth centuryrsquorsquo had called anachronismlsquolsquothe worst of all sins the sin that cannot be forgivenrsquorsquo for a historian110

Against the contention that Rabelais had been a disguised atheist Febvrefurnished meticulous examples that the conditions of this very possibilitywere lacking for people in the early modern age In this way according toRanciere Febvre did two things First he proved the impossibility ofunbelief by sketching a panorama in which unbelief seemed improbableFebvre located Rabelais in a world of perfect synchrony in which no onecould be lsquolsquobeforersquorsquo their time and every life was pervaded by religion frombaptism to death111 Secondly Febvre who characterized this synchronicworld of early modernity posited his own text as outside of time and inthis way solved a philosophical problem by way of a poetic procedurewithout reflecting on this change of register Historiography wouldaccordingly be a speech that narrates in the system of the past andexplains in the system of the present112 In this way Ranciere argued it isprecisely anachronism that characterizes historiography as a science113

107 Idem Names of History p 92108 Ibid p 97109 Ibid pp 101ff110 Lucien Febvre The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century The Religion ofRabelais Beatrice Gottlieb (transl) (Cambridge MA [etc] 1982 first published 1942) p 5111 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoLe concept drsquoanachronisme et la verite de lrsquohistorienrsquorsquo LrsquoInactuel6 (1996) pp 53ndash68 58112 Ibid pp 63ff113 Ibid p 65 Starting from this point the historian of antiquity Nicole Loraux in debatewith Ranciere pleaded for the targeted formulation lsquolsquocontrolled anachronismrsquorsquo Applying such

82 Mischa Suter


However the subjection of historical actors to the lsquolsquopossiblersquorsquo of an era isultimately anti-historical For history precisely arises when people aredissimilar to their time and make a break with the temporal line thatassigns them their place There are a plurality of temporal lines at work inhistory arising through encounter displacement and appropriation114

Only untimeliness therefore makes history possibleUntimeliness also appears however as a forming principle of Rancierersquos

procedure115 The present article began with the question as to what itmeans if a thinker of non-actuality becomes actual The principle of non-actuality it was argued was pursued by Ranciere and Les Revoltes logi-ques by way of a temporal estrangement of themes and debates LesRevoltes logiques stood for an attempt in the aftermath of revolt to shiftits own politics into history and in this way ndash as shown by the counter-knowledge of the enquete and the etablie(s) ndash maintain an analyticorientation that had arisen from the movement In this orientation cri-tique as power of separation is combined with attention to the event Thispoint of departure might lead to various destinations

Some historians oriented to the linguistic turn saw in Rancierersquos perspectivea welcome challenge to what they experienced as an economic deterministstraitjacket I would like however to highlight another orientation ndash theuntimeliness of the insistence on lsquolsquowords today seen as awkwardrsquorsquo such aslsquolsquofactoryrsquorsquo lsquolsquoproletariansrsquorsquo or lsquolsquorevolutionrsquorsquo that were mentioned at the begin-ning Linked with this could be an idea of emancipation in which a subject ndashneither endowed with an authentic core nor autonomous ndash acts seizes theword and thereby alters the coordinates of the situation itself Subjectificationwould accordingly then be the historically recuperable moment of a visibilityor appearance when an existing identity is abandoned Conceiving lsquolsquohazardoussubjectificationrsquorsquo as dis-identifying as a process of surprise offers a promisingalternative to a prevailing view that with a kind of lsquolsquoWeberizedrsquorsquo Foucaultreduces processes of subjectification to streamlining and inscription

Today the widespread interest in Rancierersquos work could be a token thatsuch a perspective insisting on an emancipatory break that is untimely inthe double sense is gaining ground For example some of Rancierersquosarguments have been used to reflect on the situation of gender history116

modern categories as lsquolsquopublic spherersquorsquo to antiquity leads to a reciprocal destabilization betweenthe category and the field of investigation Cf Nicole Loraux and Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoEloge delrsquoanachronisme en histoirersquorsquo Le Genre humain 27 (1993) pp 23ndash39114 Ranciere lsquolsquoConcept drsquoanachronismersquorsquo p 66115 Kristin Ross lsquolsquoHistoricizing Untimelinessrsquorsquo in Rockhill Jacques Ranciere pp 15ndash29Genevieve Fraisse lsquolsquoA lrsquoimpossible on est tenursquorsquo in Cornu Philosophie deplacee pp 71ndash77116 Caroline Arni lsquolsquoZeitlichkeit Anachronismus und Anachronien Gegenwart und Trans-formationen der Geschlechtergeschichte aus geschichtstheoretischer Perspektiversquorsquo LrsquoHommeEuropaische Zeitschrift fur feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 18 (2007) pp 53ndash76



The recently founded journal History of the Present refers explicitly toLes Revoltes logiques without however intending simply a new editionof the French journal117 This journal aims at practising historiography ascritique by challenging the implicit assumptions and uninvestigatedfoundations of social certainties118

To conclude the recent interest in Ranciere should be situated in abroader context of social history and for this purpose ndash fragmentarily ndashsome positions should be indicated that share certain characteristics withhis procedure without being in debt to something like a Ranciereanperspective (the polemicist of La lecon drsquoAlthusser has no lesson to givehimself) Some works on the history of emotions such as those byWilliam Reddy share an interest with Ranciere in taking account ofthe historical actorsrsquo agency beyond representation119 Other historiansformulate a critique comparable with Rancierersquos of the social a priorifor example Carolyn Steedman has shown with her recent works ondomestic servants how people ndash individually or as a whole occupationalgroup ndash withdrew themselves from a certain dominant script of socialhistory120 Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker in The Many-HeadedHydra sketch the genesis of a trans-Atlantic proletariat through thehistory of unsuspected connections and solidarities the lsquolsquomotley crewrsquorsquowere characterized not by a common structural positioning but rather byparticipation in lsquolsquobroader more creative forms of identificationrsquorsquo121

117 The editorial team is made up of Joan W Scott Andrew Aisenberg Brian Connolly BenKafka Sylvia Schafer and Mrinalini Sinha cf lsquolsquoIntroducing History of the Presentrsquorsquo History ofthe Present 1 (2011) pp 1ndash4118 For more detail on this programme Joan W Scott lsquolsquoHistory-writing as Critiquersquorsquo in KeithJenkins Sue Morgan and Alan Munslow (eds) Manifestos for History (London [etc] 2007)pp 19ndash38119 To repeat this does not mean that this interest is conceptualized in the same way Out ofthe wide field of the history of emotions we can only indicate here the works of WilliamReddy especially as he was connected with Les Revoltes logiques William M Reddy TheNavigation of Feeling A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge [etc] 2001)idem The Invisible Code Honor and Sentiment in Post-Revolutionary France 1814ndash1848(Berkeley CA [etc] 1997) idem lsquolsquoLrsquoouvrier mauvais public A travers trois chansonsdrsquoAlexandre Desrousseauxrsquorsquo in Collectif Revoltes logiques Esthetiques du peuple pp 175ndash184For a short critique of what in his view is a one-sided attention to representation taking thecollective work Histoire des Femmes as an example cf Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoLrsquohistoire lsquodesrsquofemmes entre subjectivation et representation (note critique)rsquorsquo Annales ESC 48 (1993) pp1011ndash1019120 Carolyn Steedman Master and Servant Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age(Cambridge [etc] 2007) for the incompatibility between individual actors and social-historicalassumptions idem Labours Lost Domestic Service and the Making of Modern England(Cambridge [etc] 2009) for the rewriting of state formation and modernization through thelens of waged domestic service121 Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker The Many-Headed Hydra Sailors Slaves Com-moners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (London [etc] 2000) p 246

84 Mischa Suter


Finally Arlette Farge in her book on the lsquolsquoimpossiblersquorsquo ever fleetinghistory of the voice in the eighteenth century focuses on articulations inthe literal sense122

I mention these very different books chosen quite subjectively notbecause they lsquolsquoappealrsquorsquo to Ranciere but because in various ways theydisplay a strengthened attention to seizing the word to a rupture or tothe intersection of different temporal lines In that sense history-writingmight help in the need for untimeliness in our own political present

My reading of this is indebted to Patrick Eiden-Offe lsquolsquoHistorische Gegen-Bild-ProduktionZur Darstellungsweise eines nicht-identischen Proletariats am Beispiel der VielkopfigenHydrarsquorsquo SozialGeschichte Online 3 (2010) pp 83ndash116122 Arlette Farge Essai pour une histoire des voix au dix-huitieme siecle (Paris [etc] 2009)



however is Rancierersquos relationship to history This may well be becausesince the late 1990s the philosopher has more rarely referred to thearchives of working-class history to develop his arguments than he did fora while from the mid 1970s onwards But an understanding of history asrupture lies at the heart of Rancierersquos project In this sense Ranciere haspractised historiography in order as a philosopher to shift his questions toa different terrain He has also critically commented on the politics andpoetics of historical science His texts form according to the historianArlette Farge who has been involved in Rancierersquos projects2 a lsquolsquothorn inthe sidersquorsquo of social history3

Ranciere writes of a collection of some of his earlier essays that theycontain words lsquolsquotoday seen as awkwardrsquorsquo such as lsquolsquopeople poor revolutionfactory workers proletariansrsquorsquo ndash and it is not enough to point out that at thetime these texts were written this kind of vocabulary was current usage4 It israther that when they were written Ranciere was already bringing differenttime periods together resorting to stories and characters from the nineteenthcentury in order to shake the certainties of the surrounding present ndash thedebates of the radical Left in France after 1968 I shall discuss here thisdouble untimeliness the connection between historiography and militantintellectual practice This was the purpose for which a collective historicalproject was set up in which Ranciere was involved the periodicalLes Revoltes logiques that was published from 1975 to 1981

I shall go on to show how Les Revoltes logiques and Ranciere in hisindividual work deployed the specific perspectives and methods of theradical Left movement These included forms of lsquolsquomilitant investigationrsquorsquothat have been discussed recently particularly in connection with Italianoperaismo5 In France similar practices were linked with the bywords

entre sociologie et philosophie (Paris 2006) Laurence Cornu and Patrice Vermeren (eds) Laphilosophie deplacee autour de Jacques Ranciere (Paris 2006) also see the journal issueslsquolsquoJacques Ranciere Aesthetics Politics Philosophyrsquorsquo Paragraph 28 (2005) lsquolsquoJacques Rancierelrsquoindisciplinersquorsquo Labyrinthe 17 (2004) lsquolsquoAutour de Jacques Rancierersquorsquo Critique 601602 (1997)2 Camille Deslypper and Guy Dreux lsquolsquoLa parole comme evenement Entretien avec ArletteFargersquorsquo Nouveaux regards 30 (2005) online at httpwwwparutionscomindexphppid5

1amprid54ampsrid5100ampida56299 (last accessed 14 November 2011)3 Farge names among others as similar lsquolsquothornsrsquorsquo Paul Veyne Michel Foucault and Italianmicrohistory Arlette Farge lsquolsquoLrsquohistoire socialersquorsquo in Francois Bedarida (ed) Lrsquohistoire et lemetier drsquohistorien en France 1945ndash1995 (Paris 1995) pp 281ndash300 290ff4 Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoPreface to the English Editionrsquorsquo in idem Staging the People The Pro-letarian and His Double David Fernbach (transl) (London [etc] 2011) This volume and itssuccessor The Intellectual and His People (London [etc] 2012) contain Rancierersquos contribu-tions to the periodical Les Revoltes logiques that are discussed below The argument repeatedhere is presented more explicitly in Jacques Ranciere lsquolsquoPrefacersquorsquo in idem Les scenes du peupleLes Revoltes logiques 1975ndash1985 (Lyons 2003) pp 7ndash185 Alberto Toscano in a gripping and pertinent article has criticized Rancierersquos challenging ofscientific practice and indicated as a counter-example for consideration the inchiesta of Italian

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r survey - core · 2017. 12. 3. · arlette farge who has been involved in rancie`re’s projects,2...

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