Jacques Ranciere: Literature, Politics, Aesthetics: Approaches to Democratic Disagreement

“Pour que l’invitation produise quelque effet de pensée, il faut que la rencontre trouve son point de mésentente.”–La mésentente (12)

[In order for the invitation to produce some effect of thought, the encounter must find its point of disagreement.]

The Principles of Equality, Education and Democracy

SG In reading your work, one has the impression that you have had a kind of revelation or “nuit de Pascal” in encountering that extraordinary nineteenth-century pedagogue, Joseph Jacotot, to whom you have devoted a book, Le maître ignorant (1987).

JR It was not a “nuit de Pascal,” but certainly an essential encounter for re-asking the question of politics and equality. In fact, Joseph Jacotot proposed, in an incredibly provocative way, two radical principles that placed the pedagogical paradigm alongside the progressivist logic generally identified with democracy. First of all, equality is not a goal to be attained. The progressivists who proclaim equality as the end result of a process of reducing inequalities, of educating the masses, etc., reproduce the logic of the teacher who assures his power by being in charge of the gap he claims to bridge between ignorance and knowledge. Equality must be seen as a point of departure, and not as a destination. We must assume that all intelligences are equal, and work under this assumption. But also, Jacotot raised a radical provocation to democratic politics. For him, equality could only be intellectual equality among individuals. It could never have a social consistency. Any attempt to realize it socially led to its loss. It seemed to me that every form of egalitarian politics was confronted by this challenge: to affirm equality as an axiom, as an assumption, and not as a goal. But also to refuse a partition between intellectual equality and social inequality; to believe that even if egalitarian assumptions are alien to social logic and [End Page 3] aggregation, they can be affirmed there transgressively, and that politics consists of this very confrontation.