Rancière, Politics, and the Occupy Movement

Abstract

This paper focuses on the work o f Jacques Ranciere, his view o f politics, and its relevance for understanding key aspects o f social protest movements such as the Occupy movement. The paper outlines some o f Ranciere's key concepts, such as the distinction between politics and the police, subjectivity, 'in-between spaces', and 'insubstantial com m unities', and attem pts to locate his concept o f politics within a wider spectrum of political form s in order to bring out its distinctive nature. Links are then m ade to the ideas and practices o f the Occupy movement as an expression o f politics th at Ranciere has recently endorsed. The paper concludes with a discussion of some o f the critical questions concerning the effectiveness of this style of politics (questions o f political organisation and engagem ent with the state) and the wider consequences for Ranciere's concept of radical politics.

Rancière and the re-distribution of the sensible: The artist Rosanna Raymond, dissensus and postcolonial sensibilities within the spaces of the museum

“…Rancière, reflecting on the '(p)olitics of aesthetics ' (2004), has been inspiring to those who research visual culture within geography including Lisle (2006), Staheli (2008), Dixon (2009) and Poole (1997). Others such as Bassett, (2014), Chambers (2011) andDikeç (2005) have considered Rancière's account of 'pure' politics in spaces of dissent.…”

Politics of dissensus in geographies of architecture: Testing equality at Ed Roberts Campus, Berkeley

“…First, Rancière claims that politics interferes with prevailing “distributions of the sensible,” whereby a collective “parcels out places and forms of participation in a common world” (Rancière, 2004a, p. 89; see also Bassett, ; Davidson & Iveson, ; Purcell, ). These distributions are sustained in practices of power, or “policing,” which Rancière understands in a “non‐pejorative” way as actions engaged in the “halting and opening of flows of circulation” (Chambers, , pp.…”

Staging Equality in Greek Squares: Hybrid Spaces of Political Subjectification

“…There is now an emerging body of geographical work that mobilizes Jacques Rancière's work to inform readings of emancipatory politics (Dikeç, ; Swyngedouw, ; Dikeç ; ; Davidson and Iveson, ; Swyngedouw, ), which often explicitly focus on the urban uprisings that have been unfolding since 2011 (Bassett, ; Davidson and Iveson, ; Kaika and Karaliotas, ). This article seeks to contribute to this body of work by engaging with Rancière's notion of political subjectification.…”

“…For Rancière, politics is a process of political subjectification that centres on the rupture with previous subject positions through the opening of spaces (Rancière, ; Dikeç, ). Arguably, then, the process of becoming a political subject and its spatialized expression in the squares are two elements of the movement that resonate with Rancière's notion of politics (see also Basset, , and Davidson and Iveson, , on the Occupy movement). However, the spatialized tensions that characterize this process are rarely addressed by Rancière or in accounts of politics that draw on his writings (for a notable exception, though not one that engages with space, see Prentoulis and Thomassen, ).…”