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Time in Jacques Rancière's "Les Temps modernes"

Publication |
2020

Abstract

This paper interprets the meaning of time in the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere's 2018 work, Les Temps modernes (2018). Time here means the manner of organizing the living and at the same time the composition of the narrative, whose form is distributed by the structuration of the living.

Time conceived in this way constitutes a political matter, which is becomes clear in the manner of working with the time of different narratives. Ranciere focuses on Marxism and present-day historiography.

He places the roots of both discursive practices in the modern period, which was defined by the abolition of the hierarchy of times (emancipation of time forms), and examines the degree to which their roots have endured. The second half of the study is devoted to Ranciere's analyzes of how the emancipation of time is reflected in modern art.

It reviews Ranciere's analyzes of selected modern works, in which art - on account of the forms of narrative used - can even constitute a kind of competitive claim to politics. The author also tangentially addresses other of Ranciere's texts.