Moments Politiques ─ Interventions 1977-2009

Moments Politiques collects the short essays and interviews of Jacques Ranciere from a span of thirty years, 1977 to 2007. Sparked by specific events in European and world news as they were happening, these pieces seek to call into question the inevitability we see in the world and undermine the legitimacy of what we think is possible. By examining the issues in which political moments arise, such as 9/11, immigration laws, and even the philosophy of Foucault, Ranciere opens us up to the possibility of a different world, to reimagining, and re-charting, the map of what is possible.

To speak of "political moments" is to say, first and foremost, that politics is not the continuous unfolding of governmental acts and power struggles; rather, it exists in those moments that question what politics is, exactly, what kind of community it engages, what people are contained therein and of what those people are capable. Politics is the impulse that either sparks or stalls a movement.

JACQUES RANCIERE is one of most important figures of contemporary French philosophy. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. His books include The Politics of Aesthetics, On the Shores of Politics, Short Voyages to the Land of the People, The Future of the Image, and The Nights of Labor.


MARY FOSTER, educated at McGill University (BA, Joint Honours, Philosophy and English Literature; MA, Political Science) has translated numerous texts in the area of philosophy and political science, both for academic and practical use. She has recently completed translating a manual for the Accompaniment and Solidarity Project with Colombia, Decolonizing Our Solidarity, and Normand Baillergeon's An Introduction to Anarchism, History and Current Challenges.