The Future of the Image

In The Future of the Image, Jacques Ranci¨re develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, showing how art and politics have always been intrinsically intertwined. Covering a range of art movements, filmmakers such as Godard and Bresson, and thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Adorno, Barthes, Lyotard and Greenberg, Ranci¨re shows that contemporary theorists of the image are suffering from religious tendencies.

He argues that there is a stark political choice in art: it can either reinforce a radical democracy, or create a new reactionary mysticism. For Ranci¨re there is never a pure art: the aesthetic revolution must always embrace egalitarian ideals.