| Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics Contributor(s): Rancière, Jacques (Author), Swenson, James (Translator), Rockhill, Gabriel (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 0231151020 ISBN-13: 9780231151023 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $103.95 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: November 2011 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Aesthetics - Literary Criticism | European - French - Philosophy | Political |
| Dewey: 840.900 |
| LCCN: 2011025402 |
| Series: New Directions in Critical Theory |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 6" W x 8.9" (1.01 lbs) 208 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - French |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Jacques Ranci re has continually unsettled political discourse, particularly through his questioning of aesthetic "distributions of the sensible," which configure the limits of what can be seen and said. Widely recognized as a seminal work in Ranci re's corpus, the translation of which is long overdue, Mute Speech is an intellectual tour de force proposing a new framework for thinking about the history of art and literature. Ranci re argues that our current notion of "literature" is a relatively recent creation, having first appeared in the wake of the French Revolution and with the rise of Romanticism. In its rejection of the system of representational hierarchies that had constituted belles-letters, "literature" is founded upon a radical equivalence in which all things are possible expressions of the life of a people. With an analysis reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, the German Romantics, Vico, and Cervantes and concluding with brilliant readings of Flaubert, Mallarm , and Proust, Ranci re demonstrates the uncontrollable democratic impulse lying at the heart of literature's still-vital capacity for reinvention. |