The Differences Between Ranciere’s Mesentente (Political Disagreement) and Lyotard’s Differend

Rancière’s La Mésentente (1995), which conflicts with both classical (Plato, Aristotle) and modern (Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, etc.) political philosophy, in the name of politics as action, in the name of the “sans part“— those still in a provisional public invisibility – underlines from the start its opposition toLyotard’s Le Différend.

Lyotard (1924-1998) was sixteen years older than Rancière; both taught philosophy at the experimental center established in fall 1968 in Vincennes after the events of the previous May. Both also subsequently taught at l’Université de Paris-8. For all philosophers who chose to teach and engage in activism at Vincennes, the recruitment was, according to F. Chatelet, politico-philosophical. Each non-Communist Marxist group sent their representatives: the Althusser-Maoists from the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm, sent Badiou and Rancière; the Trotskyists sentBensaïd, Weber, and Brossat, the libertarians surrounding Schérer and Hocquenghem. This avant-garde was to bejoined by Deleuze and Lyotard. Lyotard, who had belonged to the group “Socialisme et Barbarie” founded by Lefort and Castoriadis, was welcomed somewhat later, with a certain apprehension. As Rancière recalled at Lyotard’s funeral, one knew that with him things would not be easy. In fact, the way people behaved was not necessarily academic in this experimental university center instituted by the Gaullist government in order to create a kind of focal abscess for everything radical in the French university system. It was not unusual for Maoist Cultural Revolution commandos to be looking for a fight and for philosophical arguments to be hurled at Lyotard, especially once he “betrayed the dictates of the proletariat” by developing the analyses of L’économie libidinale.