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Beyond the Logic of Representation : The Problem of The Unrepresentable in the Philosophy of Image of Jacques Ranciere

Publication |
2008

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of representation on the background of J. Rancière's political philosophy, in which he rejects the concept of the unrepresentable.

The resolution of the prob-lem follows from the confronting of two conceptions of the unrepresentable: that of the esthet-ics of the sublime in Kant and Lyotard and of the politics of prohibition in Foucault on one hand and Rancière's understanding of sharing the perceptible on the other hand. This discus-sion leads the author to the problem of visuality conceived as a set of visual representations, which in a historically given period are legitimately visible.

This definition of visuality returns the representation and the unrepresentable back into the political conception of image.