It is frequently said that we are living through the end of politics, the end of
social upheavals, the end of utopian folly. Consensual realism is the order of
the day. But political realists, remarks Jacques Ranciere, are always several st
eps behind reality, and the only thing which may come to an end with their domin
ance is democracy.
'We could', he suggests, 'merely smile at the duplicity of
the conclusion/suppression of politics which is simultaneously a suppression/co
nclusion of philosophy.' This is precisely the task which Ranciere undertakes in
these subtle and perceptive essays. He argues persuasively that since Plato and
Aristotle politics has always constructed itself as the art of ending politics,
that realism is itself utopian, and that what has succeeded the polemical forms
of class struggle is not the wisdom of a new millennium but the return of old f
ears, criminality and chaos.
