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© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Jacques Rancière re-inflects Aristotle's famous maxim to claim that 'man is a political animal because he is a literary animal'. He goes on to relate this characteristic of 'literarity' to Plato's description of written language as an 'orphan letter', to a process of 'disincorporation' and to a distinction between a 'body' and a 'quasi-body'. These founding assumptions of Rancière's theory of politics have attracted significant attention among commentators. Yet existing commentary on Rancière's work has left a number of key questions unresolved. Does the power of 'literarity' depend on the development of mass literacy, of the institution of literature and the development of the printing press? What, precisely, is the value of the distinction between a 'body' and a 'quasi-body'? Is, as many critics have argued, Rancière's notion of 'literarity' fundamentally ahistorical, falsely universalising and hence politically naive? Through close readings of Rancière's interpretations of Hobbes's Leviathan and Balzac's novel, Le Curé de village, alongside its own reading of an incident in Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave, this article seeks to elucidate these questions. It argues that 'literarity' does indeed function as a transhistorical constant in Rancière's work but that this does not justify accusations of ahistoricism or naivete.

Michel Houellebecq has gained a reputation for combining left-wing critiques of neo-liberal capitalism with reactionary laments at the decline of nation, religion, honest labour, and the patriarchal family. Critics typically thus either declare the novelist to be unclassifiable in political terms or to be a 'rouge-brun'. Surveying Houellebecq's novels, from Extension du domaine de la lutte (1994) to Sérotonine (2019), we argue that there is nothing unclassifiable, 'rouge' or left-wing about the author's political worldview. On the contrary, his work needs to be understood as belonging to a tradition of French counterrevolutionary thought, personified by Auguste Comte and Charles Maurras.

Neo-liberalism as "imposition" and "invasion"? -- The poetics and politics of practice -- From practical sense to performative politics -- Field theory and political analysis -- Gender politics and the return of symbolic domination -- Aesthetics, politics, and the market -- Universalism and the elusive public sphere

"This new study presents the first sustained critical analysis of the political implications of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. Through a close reading of the political speeches and pronouncements of his later years, Jeremy F. Lane provides a detailed exposition both of Bourdieu's critique of neo-liberalism and of his own political position. Bourdieu's theory of politics is also brought into critical dialogue with the work of a range of other commentators of a broadly Marxist or post-Marxist orientation who have also intervened in such debates - theorists such as Stuart Hall, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek and Jacques Ranciere." "The first sustained analysis of Bourdieu's politics will seek to assess the validity of his claims as to the distinctiveness and superiority of his own field theory as a tool of political analysis. It will be of great use to students and researchers in sociology, social theory, cultural studies, French studies and political science."--Jacket.

This study of the work of the influential French sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu places his work firmly in the context of developments both in the French post-war intellectual field an din post-war French society as a whole. Set against the background of rapid change and upheaval that has characterised post-war French society, culture and politics, Bourdieu's work can be seen as offering a peculiarly perceptive analysis of France's problematic transition to an era of late capitalism. Proceeding thematically, this study traces the development of Bourdieu's thought, elucidating the relationship between the anthropological and sociological aspects of his work, examining his debt to Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Bachelard, and highlighting his antagonistic relationship with a series of contemporary intellectual figures and movements - Barthes, Lefebvre, Touraine, Sartre, Fanon, Foucault, Derrida, structuralism and post-structuralism

This article begins with the 2009 documentary, La Dépossession, by filmmaker Jean-Robert Viallet, suggesting that La Défense is depicted as an anti-city. It seeks to anatomise this trope and chronotope, examining the manner in which a range of recent novels and feature films similarly lament the destructive effects of globalised finance on French society, polity and nation. They figure spatiotemporal relationships between France's present and its historical past, between the anonymity of La Défense and certain unmistakably French locations, between a supposedly 'Anglo-Saxon' mode of capital accumulation and the French nation this is held to threaten. Having identified the characteristic features of this trope and chronotope, the article then turns to consider some of their inherent paradoxes, ironies and contradictions. It points out that the historic centre of Haussmann's Paris is itself the product of an earlier process of violent restructuring and dispossession driven by powerful financial forces and undertaken at the behest of a highly conservative political regime. It is ironic that Haussmann's cityscape should now be presented as a symbol of stable, traditional, if now embattled, French national identity. Perhaps, La Défense should be imagined less as an anti-city than as a location deeply embedded in the complexities, contradictions and conflicts of French history.

In Le Capitalisme cognitif (2007), Yann Moulier Boutang argues that, under Post-Fordism, workers are expected to invest ever more of their creative, affective, and cognitive powers in their labours. These eminently human qualities, he maintains, are inherently resistant to capture and exploitation by capitalism. Hence, their integration into the capitalist system risks provoking that system's downfall, heralding the emergence of an Aesthetic State in which work itself will be modelled on disinterested creative activity and genuine emancipation will follow. Moulier Boutang is a leading representative of the French brand of néo-opéraïste thought and his work typifies the manner in which néo-operaïstes understand the relationships between work, aesthetics, and political emancipation. This is an understanding that stands in stark contrast to the work of Jacques Rancière. For Rancière, emancipation can only come through an escape from work, in moments of idleness that are prefigured in the disinterested nature of aesthetic experience. This article will examine the nature and stakes of this striking contrast between Moulier Boutang's 'aesthetics of work' and Rancière's 'aesthetics of idleness', between the former's belief in the possibility of emancipation through work and the latter's focus on the possibilities of emancipation from work.

This article questions whether readings of Francis Veber's Le Placard (2001) as simply a parody of political correctness have tended to overlook the allegorical significance of its depiction of a middle-aged executive forced to pretend to be gay, simulating libidinal investments he does not in fact possess, in order to protect his job. It argues that the film merits reinterpretation as being not only a parody of political correctness but also a powerful allegory for the increasing demands placed on employees to invest their most personal affects and aptitudes in their work. Drawing on the work of Yann Moulier Boutang, the article interprets such demands as symptomatic of a regime of 'cognitive capitalism', in which 'immaterial' forms of labour represent the primary source of surplus value. The article thus offers an alternative reading of the film's treatment of questions of work, gender, sexuality, family and nation, before situating Le Placard in the context of a broader range of recent French filmic representations of the contemporary workplace.

This article questions whether readings of Francis Veber's Le Placard (2001) as simply a parody of political correctness have tended to overlook the allegorical significance of its depiction of a middle-aged executive forced to pretend to be gay, simulating libidinal investments he does not in fact possess, in order to protect his job. It argues that the film merits re-interpretation as being not only a parody of political correctness but also a powerful allegory for the increasing demands placed on employees to invest their most personal affects and aptitudes in their work. Drawing on the work of Yann Moulier Boutang, the article interprets such demands as symptomatic of a regime of 'cognitive capitalism', in which 'immaterial' forms of labour represent the primary source of surplus value. The article thus offers an alternative reading of the film's treatment of questions of work, gender, sexuality, family, and nation, before situating Le Placard in the context of a broader range of recent French filmic representations of the contemporary workplace.

On the evening of 1 July 1997, Jacques Derrida made an appearance on stage during a concert by the celebrated African American free jazz saxophonist, Ornette Coleman. Derrida's attempts to read from a pre-prepared text, as Coleman responded on his saxophone, were interrupted by loud boos and catcalls from the audience. After a few moments, Derrida left the stage, having failed to complete his peroration. By means of a close reading of the text of his aborted intervention, this article argues that Derrida in fact had something very significant to contribute to debates about the nature of improvised jazz performance. More specifically, Derrida's intervention constitutes an important attempt to challenge and rethink long-held assumptions about the apparently spontaneous, unmediated, and hence supposedly 'primitive' nature of improvised jazz performance. In so doing, he was attempting to deconstruct a long tradition of phonocentric, ethnocentric, even racist assumptions that have characterised much jazz criticism, from its origins to the present day.