The Future of the Image

In The Future of the Image, Jacques Ranciere 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, Ranciere 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 Ranciere there is never a pure art: the aesthetic revolution must always embrace egalitarian ideals.