Lecture by Jacques Rancière

Please note: RSVP required at rsvp@maisonfrancaise.org

Eugene J. Sheffer Distinguished Lecture  

Followed by a roundtable discussion with Professor Phil Watts (French, Columbia), Patricia Dailey (English, Columbia), James Swenson (French, Rutgers), Nico Baumbach (Film, Columbia) and Madeleine Dobie (French, Columbia)

Jacques Rancière discusses his new work Aisthesis (2011).  In Aisthesis, Rancière examines some 15 moments over the last 200 years, from James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and an evening Mallarmé spends at the Folies-Bergère to Dziga Vertov's newsreels, all of which put into question what art is and what art can do.  With this book, Rancière continues to refine his concept of the "aesthetic regime" and to challenge the frontiers between art and everyday experience.

Jacques Rancière is a French philosopher and author, with a focus on politics and aesthetics. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Paris (Saint Denis) and is the author of several works, including The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Proletarian Nights: The Workers’ Dream in Nineteenth Century France and Mute Speech.

Co-sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Copies of two Jacques Ranciere's classic publications, Proletarian Nights and The Future of the Image, will be available for purchase. The English-language translation of Aisthesis will be available in Spring 2013.