Literature As Politics:Rancière's Literary Political View

The research topic of this thesis dwells on the literary political view of French contemporary European left politician and philosopher Jacques Rancière,discussing his unique thoughts on the relationship of selfdiscipline and heteronomy of literature.The main content of this thesis focuses on Rancière's political connotations,his unique view on politicalliterary relations and literature critical system.The literary political view is an important part of the Rancière 's ideology,which creates a special field with its own dissident critical power,and communicates the boundaries between literature and politics by means of "dissensus" and "distribution of the sensible",which means literature is a kind of politics.In this sense,literature as a new significant system achieves a fusion between selfdiscipline and heteronomy of art,breaking the classical poetic calss of Aristotle,opening a new space beyond literary representative regime.This thesis firstly traces the ideological origin of Rancière's political ideology,believes that his political view is based on the inheritance of Althusser's scientific Marxism and Foucault's power viewpoint.After “May Storm” in France in 1968,Rancière further develops the involved theory of Althusser,supports people to constantly break the established power relationship in reality events and to achieve dynamic democracy through the fight of the “Who have no part”.Hence,Rancière distinguishes the concept of “politics” and “security”,maintains that politics is an activity of “distribution of the sensible” under the principle of “dissensus”.It is at this level that literature and politics have reached an intrinsic consensus.Rancière emphasizes literature needs to break the limit of the traditional hierarchical rule and representative regime,to produce a subjective,self-criticism power from dissensus,so that to achieve the harmony of self-discipline and heteronomy in the sensible distribution of literature.In other words,to achieve "a molecular democracy".In order to further refine the relationship of self-discipline literature and heteronomy literature,this thesis further studies the criticism of Rancière works on Flaubert,Balzac and Proust,discusses his view about literature style and form.In the book Mrs.Bovary,Rancière points out that the literary style is a kind of “the absolute way of looking at things”,which is " the viewers' eyes" to communicate internal speech in and external significant system of literature.Then he takes Balzac's Village of the Gods as an example to prove the gap between self-discipline and heteronomy of literature.In the end,he finds the possibility of transcending such contradiction in Proust's work.In Search of Lost Time links the literary form and content,connects the speech and the spirit of literature by using metaphors.Proust is making a “transcendental writing”,which achieves the blending between self-discipline and heteronomy in literature and the integration of literary criticism and literary political ideology.In a word,the essence of Rancière 's literary political view is dissident.Literature is constantly criticizing itself in the process of sensible distribution,exploring its own power field.However,Rancière never stops searching definite connotations of literature.In process of “Do what you know you can't do”,he endows literature with a transcendent power to fighting for its own democracy and liberation.