Jacques Ranciere - What Times Are We Living In?

1 Cover

2 Title Page What Times Are We Living In? A Conversation with Eric Hazan Jacques Rancière Translated by Steven Corcoran polity

3 Copyright Originally published in French as En quel temps vivons-nous ? Conversation avec Eric Hazan © La Fabrique Éditions, 2017 This English edition © 2021 by Polity Press Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 101 Station Landing Suite 300 Medford, MA 02155, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3700-6 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

4 What Times Are We Living In? About the book This book took the form of a ‘conversation’ after a compromise was reached. At La Fabrique we wanted Rancière to express his thoughts on the times we are living in, but he himself didn’t feel the need to do so. Then, perhaps worn down by my asking, he told me one day that, if I presented him with some questions, he would reply to them. The task seemed to me a difficult one, although the aim was clear: to get Rancière to elaborate on things he had recently put forward in articles and interviews – on novelty in ‘our times’ and on what in them is continuous with the past, on the link between representation and democracy, on the end of work as the form of a common world to come, on hopes for a community of struggle that is also a community of life, on the new caution that we must adopt when speaking about such apparently simple notions as ‘people’, ‘insurrection’ or ‘history’ … But what questions should be asked and where to start? I took some months to decide, then ended up by setting down one piece of the puzzle and, Rancière playing the game, the rest fell nicely into place. The conversation unfolded in written form, at a lively pace, between August 2016 and February 2017. The reader will be the judge of whether the result lives up to the question posed in the title of this short book. E.H.

5 What Times Are We Living In?

6 End User License Agreement

1 Cover

2 Table of Contents

3 Title Page What Times Are We Living In? A Conversation with Eric Hazan Jacques Rancière Translated by Steven Corcoran polity

4 Copyright Originally published in French as En quel temps vivons-nous ? Conversation avec Eric Hazan © La Fabrique Éditions, 2017 This English edition © 2021 by Polity Press Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 101 Station Landing Suite 300 Medford, MA 02155, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3700-6 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

5 About the book

6 Begin Reading

7 End User License Agreement

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Jacques Rancière

Translated by Steven Corcoran

polity

Originally published in French as En quel temps vivons-nous ? Conversation avec Eric Hazan © La Fabrique Éditions, 2017

This English edition © 2021 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

101 Station Landing

Suite 300

Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3700-6

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

This book took the form of a ‘conversation’ after a compromise was reached. At La Fabrique we wanted Rancière to express his thoughts on the times we are living in, but he himself didn’t feel the need to do so. Then, perhaps worn down by my asking, he told me one day that, if I presented him with some questions, he would reply to them. The task seemed to me a difficult one, although the aim was clear: to get Rancière to elaborate on things he had recently put forward in articles and interviews – on novelty in ‘our times’ and on what in them is continuous with the past, on the link between representation and democracy, on the end of work as the form of a common world to come, on hopes for a community of struggle that is also a community of life, on the new caution that we must adopt when speaking about such apparently simple notions as ‘people’, ‘insurrection’ or ‘history’ … But what questions should be asked and where to start?