Critical Theory and Social Movements today

[articul8]

Agree that obscurantism for its own sake should be avoided, and is often a ruse of the charlatan.

But Ranciere is arguing against varieties of thoughts which try to divide the sheep and the goats, the black and the white - in a world/text where everything stands for what it is without any misleading appearances, any awkward bits sticking out, anything overspilling or haunting the way we commuicate. This is always effort can never quite achieve what it sets out to, so for Ranciere tries to highlight in his own speech that language and definitions are unstable and shifting.

The complexity is not (for the most part) there for its own sake, but the form is appropriate to the content.

re social types upsetting divisions - he shows how Marx reacts to the failed revolutionary moment of 1848 by bemoaning the fact that the new proletariat had failed to appear purely as itself (attacking the lumpens, the peasants, older forms of artisan association, petit bourgeois etc.) that took to the stage.

 

[Kaye]

Butch - be interested to know what you make of him - his basic insight seems to be working class identity inherently exceeds/displaces/becomes other to itself etc. (does bounce off Deleuze, Derrida etc.). But its more socially grounded - he uses it to explain that a great deal of discursive effort goes into insisting that that workers are workers and nothing else and the division of labour leaves a privileged elite to not to be so defined.

It's a view that is entirely opposed to conservative kinds of class organisation or identity. But would reject any attempt to privilege "working class" values/life/indentity as inherently valuable - because it leaves the core distinctions in place. Workers are at the most revolutionary when they are refusing to be workers but are acting out possibilities that are denied to them in reality.

I find Ranciere difficult but the presupposition of equality that you write about here is explored theoretically, and very accessibly in Todd May's first book (2008) on Ranciere, and less theoretically in the introduction to case studies in his recent book (this year). The first is called "The political thought of JR - creating equality", and I agree with every word in it apart from the part where he leaves open the possibility of institutionalising equality (which is perhaps the only point where he claims to challenge Ranciere). The second is blue and is called something like "contemporary movements and JR" or something like that. May has also written a super book on Deleuze.

I think Disagreement is an essential work of Ranciere's (and the one I stuck to and read quickly), and as I said I find the philosopher and his poor harder!