THE TRAGEDY OF POLITICS AS A PARTICULAR FORM OF ACTION: RE-READING RANCIERE

Abstract

Summary. The goal of the work. The task is to reveal in Rancière’s aesthetic visions the dominant motivation for freeing the world from the visible for a specific moment form of ordering social existence. However, it is evident that contrary to the statement of the return of politics, the way Rancière interprets it says otherwise – the usual political means are actually helpless, which is called «tragedy». However, at the same time, the attitude to change is preserved and implemented differently. Methodology. The article uses the method of in-depth reflective reading, which involves a critical-analytical explication, which concerns not so much the work itself, but those features of the anthropological situation, which are evidenced by the topic of the theoretical study. The method of dialectical-logical analysis is also significant – working with concepts that imply a subtle distinction and mutual transformation. Scientific novelty. Contrary to theses about «the end of philosophy», Rancière’s concept of politics has the features of a philosophical discourse: first, the formulation of the question itself has been typical of philosophy since the time of Kant: «how is politics possible»; secondly, the reading of his texts confirms the presence of such content, which is missed by generally accepted usage, which is related precisely to the search for truth, characteristic of philosophical discourse since antiquity. The semantic analysis of the concepts La mésentente and Le partage du sensible testifies: the very morphological structure of these concepts indicates the specific «positive negativity» of the first; in the second philosophy, there is a connection with dialogic philosophy and the philosophy of Marx, which synthesizes Hegel and Feuerbach. The lexeme partage orients to the thinking that corresponds to identity through disrupted identity; that is, the unity of the self (or the integrity of society) includes otherness rather than excluding it. The ambivalence of the lexeme sensible appears as a means by which politics is understood not as a phenomenon of state and power structures but as the primary basis of human existence for the constitution of a common cause. La mésentente and Le partage du sensible are synthesized as Dissensus. Conclusion. To some extent, Rancière’s apology for politics can be read as an apology for philosophy.