Politics Of Distribution Of The Sensible-On Jacque Ranciere's Aesthetics

In modern times,Jacques Ranciere's aesthetics of politics has evoked the big dream that the discipline of aesthetics used to have in its infancy,that is,human freedom and liberation.He redefines the politics with aesthetics,proposing a new theoretical thinking for the return of politics in contemporary era.This research paper centers on his aesthetics of politics,analyzing how he carries out interdisciplinary studies to unite politics with aesthetics,since these two subjects belong to different fields.To rediscover the intrinsic identity between the two fields is actually the reflection of its original essence and the need of contemporary politics.Based on his observation on aesthetics of politics,this thesis will examine his insights into artistic politics,cinema as politics,and politics of literature.The introduction of the thesis is to reveal the significance and the value of Ranciere's aesthetics of politics,especially pointing out that his theory is of great importance to contemporary political studies and the development of aesthetics,and thus is able to change our perspectives and offer a new one on solving problems in the current cultural studies.Also,this part has reviewed the current research status at homeland and abroad with a glimpse of the problems and limitations in the study.Chapter one traces the origin and background of Ranciere's theory,covering the social context in which his politics of aesthetics is formed and its genealogy.To be specific,the development of his theory is tied with social movements in French,so his theory begins with the reflection on May Movement in France,and thereby has powerful practical implications.Due to French intellectuals'engagement in social tradition and the baptism of May Movement,Ranciere reflects on scientific Marxism of Althusser,develops a new understanding and critique of knowledge and power,and criticizes the stretch of the philosopher-king from Plato to Althusser and Bourdieu by drawing on Foucault's ideas and methods.Chapter two interprets the connotations of Ranciere's idea of politics and aesthetics.It is argued that the internal identity between the two is founded on distribution of the sensible.Then the double senses of aesthetics,the politics in broad sense and the aesthetic regime of art in narrow sense,are explored from the perspectives of politics and the art.Besides,it summarizes the correspondence between the three political modes and art institutions from the integrity of his theory.This theoretical discussion on their connections is viewed as his unique critical paradigm in his art criticism and specific research in literature,but it has never been thoroughly expounded.Chapter three focuses on Ranciere's art as politics,describing respectively the liberation of the audience in art activities and the development of the critical art in art styles and its modern form while indicating the dilemma of critical art practices today.Starting from his viewpoint on political potential in picture theory,Ranciere connects sentence-images and dissensus in images with distribution of the sensible in reality to produce politics of dissensus in images in the coming image era.Chapter four examines in some details cinema as politics,combing Ranciere's countering of Deleuze's cinema theory,which enables the returning to traditional films in the current context.His critiques of film reveal coexistence and confrontation between the aesthetic regime and the representative regime in film.In terms of analyzing his creative use of film language,Godard is employed as the typical example.Chapter five discusses his way of thinking about literature where literature,the aesthetic regime of writing since 19th century,is seen as a new writing form of embodying equality and democracy that will be quite different from Aristotle's mimetic theory in poetics.Then the importance of literariness is illustrated in Ranciere's political theory because the unique feature of his political concept lies in the fact that as literary politics,it goes beyond the concept of politics in philosophical and social discourse.Finally,the attention has been given to three forms of literary language as writing for silence.In conclusion,this thesis attempts to put Ranciere's theory and his way of thinking in Chinese context to see if it would be helpful to find a new way to develop the study in aesthetics,modern art,cinema and literature at present.