Volume 61, Issue 1, Winter 2017
Special Topic on Heidegger and Paul Klee
Katharina Clausius
Pages 249-266
Translation ~ Politics
The concept of intellectual equality dominates Jacques Rancière’s prolific (and ever increasing) bibliography and remains fundamental to his aesthetic philosophy. Whereas equality’s relationship to Rancièrean pedagogy, politics, and literature has been discussed at length in recent years, however, I argue that translation represents a sustained and specific focus in Rancière’s political-aesthetic framework, one that scholarship has so far overlooked. This article considers the important but rarely-cited essay “Politics, Identification, and Subjectivization” alongside several of Rancière’s more canonical works in order to trace the role of translation as a metonymy, a scholarly style, and a political activity in his philosophical thought. The intersection of translation with ways of “doing, being, and saying” clarifies Rancière’s elegant elision of poetics and politics and ultimately sheds new light on his specific contribution to literary studies.