Rancire's Sentiments

In Rancires Sentiments Davide Panagia explores Jacques Rancires aesthetics of politics as it informs his radical democratic theory of participation. Attending to diverse practices of everyday living and doingof form, style, and scenographyin Rancires writings, Panagia characterizes Rancire as a sentimental thinker for whom the aesthetic is indistinguishable from the political. Rather than providing prescriptions for political judgment and action, Rancire focuses on how sensibilities and perceptions constitute dynamic relations between persons and the worlds they create. Panagia traces this approach by examining Rancires modernist sensibilities, his theory of radical mediation, the influence of Gustave Flaubert on Rancires literary voice, and how Rancire juxtaposes seemingly incompatible objects and phenomena to create moments of sensorial disorientation. The power of Rancires work, Panagia demonstrates, lies in its ability to leave readers with a disjunctive sensibility of the world and what political thinking is and can be.