Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge

by Jacques Rancière

How can the language of history balance storytelling with truth-telling? Rancière considers this question in a meditation on the poetics of historical knowledge that attempts to identify the literary procedures by which historical discourse escapes literature and gives itself the status of a science.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Theory, France, Poetry, Literary Criticism

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Jacques Rancière (born Algiers, 1940) is a French philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris (St. Denis) who came to prominence when he co-authored Reading Capital (1968), with the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser.

Rancière contributed to the influential volume Reading "Capital" (though his contribution is not contained in the partial English translation) before publicly breaking with Althusser over his attitude toward the May 1968 student uprising in Paris.
Since then, Rancière has departed from the path set by his teacher and published a series of works probing the concepts that make up our understanding of political discourse. What is ideology? What is the proletariat? Is there a working class? And how do these masses of workers that thinkers like Althusser referred to continuously enter into a relationship with knowledge? We talk about them but what do we know? An example of this line of thinking is Rancière's book entitled Le philosophe et ses pauvres (The Philosopher and His Poor, 1983), a book about the role of the poor in the intellectual lives of philosophers.

Most recently Rancière has written on the topic of human rights and specifically the role of international human rights organizations in asserting the authority to determine which groups of people — again the problem of masses — justify human rights interventions, and even war.

In 2006, it was reported that Rancière's aesthetic theory had become a point of reference in the visual arts, and Rancière has lectured at such art world events as the Freize Art Fair. Former French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has cited Rancière as her favourite philosopher.

Reviews

[Sense of History]

French philosopher Jacques Rancière (° 1940) offers an analysis of the historical discourse, from a post-modernist, very literary point of view, with an emphasis on the use of specific words (e.g. tyrant, despot, usurper…) and the concordance or discordance of verb tenses. This is a very theoretical study (more an essay, actually) that may be relevant for a certain target group, but unfortunately it is not for me.

[Pia G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kendisini yaratan zamana karşı bıkkınlık duyması ya da nesnesinin algılanabilir maddesini oluşturan şeylerden -zamandan, sözcüklerden ve ölümden- korkması dışında tarihi tehdit eden hiçbir şey yoktur. Tarihin bir yabancı istilasına karşı kendisini koruması gerekmez. Tek ihtiyacı, kendi hikâyesiyle barışmasıdır.

[Vladimir · Rating 5 out of 5]

I entirely agree with Hayden White’s statement about this highly remarkable book, so I quote: “What Rancière has attempted—and it is a very original attempt—is to disclose ‘the unconscious’ of historical discourse, everything that had to be repressed in order to make possible the specific kinds of historical discourse met with in our culture in our age. Traditional historians will not understand this book. Scientific historians will reject it. But those historians who continue to honor history’s links to ‘literature’ will find much to admire in it and not a little to imitate.”

[Humphrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ranciere traces modern discourse of history with a focus on the language used to articulate the subjects of history - the poetics of knowledge. This, for Ranciere, is the defining issue of history as a discipline, the one which brings to fore its position between the Scylla of naive storytelling and the Charybdis of sophomoric science. Names of History's briefness makes up for its density in terms of readability; highly recommended.

[Sibel Çokşen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...şimdiki zaman, geçmişin ve geleceğin karşısında hep yeniden ele geçirilmeli, mevsimi geçmişken kendini tekrarlayan geçmişin ve gereğinden fazla beklenen geleceğin kesintisiz eleştirisiyle kurulmalıdır." (s. 60)