The Politics of Aesthetics and the Hatred of Democracy according to Jacques Rancière
The Politics of Aesthetics and the Hatred of Democracy according to Jacques Rancière

Summary/Abstract: Among readers of Jacques Rancière there is a discussion about the possibility of aesthetics substituting for real political action. This is because while the French author elaborateson the conception of the emancipated spectator, he states that the political task of art cannotbe the removal of the spectator from her “passive” condition into the dimension of politicalaction, but only the suspension of the relationship between “active” and “passive”. However, inAisthesis, published in 2011, Rancière warns the reader that it is not a case of abandoning theaesthetic utopia, even if any teleological view is withdrawn. In this article, I intend to discussthese paradoxes by confronting the considerations of Le Spectateur émancipé and La Haine dela démocratie, trying to show that if politics itself presupposes action, the politics of aestheticsmust be understood as a non-identification process that takes subjects out of the places thatwere “addressed” to them beforehand. In La Haine de la démocratie one of the symptoms ofthe crisis of representative democracy is presented by the fact that it produces oligarchies and,on the other hand, new social dynamics appear as the conquest of a new citizenship that confrontsthese political oligarchies. Noting that demonstrations today, whether in Turkey, Spain,or New York, are similar to artistic happenings, Rancière can say that where there is aestheticsthere is democracy. Understanding this last statement is the aim of the present article.

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