Althusser's Lesson

Reviews / Votes

This precise and elegant translation of Jacques Ranciere's first book will be of keen interest to those seeking to understand Ranciere's thought as well as the development of French philosophy during the 1970s. It will also be of help to those working to reanimate politics through a thorough questioning of its guiding assumptions. In this short, fiery, and at points moving text, one sees Ranciere's own positions begin to take root as this highly original thinker comes to grips with the legacy of his mentor, Louis Althusser. Joseph J. Tanke, University of Hawaii -- Joseph J. Tanke ... if one wishes to understand the seeds of [Ranciere's significant contributions to contemporary political thought] and the times in which they were germinating, Althusser's Lesson offers as good a first-hand account as one could ask for. -- Notre Dame Philosophical Review Emiliano Battista's translation is excellent: readable, judicious in its decisions, and attentive to the complex terminological terrain of the theoretical and political field into which Ranciere's book intervened. The translator's notes are a helpful guide to this context. * Radical Philosophy * Ranciere tells a compelling story about the political effects both deliberate and unintentional of the relationship between academic Marxist discourse, institutional left politics, and the iconic mass rebellion of nine million workers that would later be known as 'the beginning of the end' of radical French leftism...Ranciere's reflections [...] open the space for a critical and politically sensitive dialogue between professors, theorists, activists, students, and workers over the political space which the university has time and time again proven itself to be. Moreover, it forces academic Marxists to consider their generally passive position in relation to these protests. -- Ashley Bohrer * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books * A lesson, like a letter, is delivered to someone, to a recipient ... in a specific time and place and, in written form, may like a letter be delayed, so delayed in fact that it misses the addressee...Sometimes a letter does reach its destination. -- Warren Montag, Occidental College, Los Angeles * Cultural Critique 83, Winter 2013 *