Understanding Rancière, Understanding Modernism

The contemporary philosopher Jacques Rancière has become over the last two decades one of the most influential voices in philosophy, political theory, and literary, art historical, and film criticism. His work reexamines the divisions that have defined our understanding of modernity, such as art and politics, representation and abstraction, and literature and philosophy. Working across these divisions, he engages the historical roots of modernism at the end of the eighteenth century, uncovering forgotten texts in the archive that trouble our notions of intellectual history. The contributors to Understanding Rancière, Understanding Modernism engage with the multiplicity of Rancière’s thought through close readings of his texts, through comparative readings with other philosophers, and through an engagement with modernist works of art and literature. The final section of the volume includes an extended glossary of the most important terms used by Rancière, which will be a valuable resource for experts and students alike.

Patrick M. Bray is Associate Professor of French at the Ohio State University, USA. He has published on critical theory, space in literature, as well as film. He is the co-editor of a volume of L'Esprit Créateur called “Building the Louvre: Architectures of Politics and Art” and author of The Novel Map: Space and Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century French Fiction (2013).

Laci Mattison is Assistant Professor of 20th Century British Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University, USA.

Paul Ardoin is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA.

S. E. Gontarski is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, USA. He is the author or editor of 29 books and, with Paul Ardoin and Laci Mattison, he is series editor of the Bloomsbury series, Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism. The serie editors were also volume editors for the initial books in that series: Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2013) and the follow-up, Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2014). Gontarski's recent books are: Beckett's “Happy Day”: A Manuscript Study (2017) and Revisioning Beckett: Samuel Beckett's Decadent Turn (Bloomsbury, 2018).