'A probing and scintillating new book on the meaning, rationality and politics of literary fiction. Rancière illuminates the surprising connection between the logic of tragedy, in which ignorance leads to misfortune, and explanation in the modern social sciences. He interrogates how that paradigm slowly unwinds into the democratizing tumult of modernism. An invaluable addition to our understanding of a topic Rancière has made his own: the aesthetic conditions of political reason.'
J.M. Bernstein, The New School for Social Research
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Doors and Windows
Behind the Windows
The Eyes of the Poor
What Voyeurs See
Window with a Street View
The Threshold of Science
The Commodity's Secret
Causality's Adventures
The Shores of the Real
The Unimaginable
Paper Landscapes
The Edge of the All and the Nothing
The Random Occurrence
Two Stories of Poor People
The Mute's Speech
The Measureless Moment
Jacques Rancière is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Paris-St. Denis.