Jacques Ranciere is a leading French philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Paris-St. Denis. His many books include The Politics of Literature, Aesthetics and Its Discontents and The Future of the Image.
'A probing and scintillating new book on the meaning, rationality and politics of literary fiction. Ranciere illuminates the surprising connection between the logic of tragedy, in which ignorance leads to misfortune, and explanation in the modern social sciences. He interrogates how that paradigm slowly unwinds into the democratizing tumult of modernism. An invaluable addition to our understanding of a topic Ranciere has made his own: the aesthetic conditions of political reason.' J.M. Bernstein, The New School for Social Research