Rancière, Politics, and the Occupy Movement

Abstract

This paper focuses on the work of Jacques Rancière, his view of politics, and its relevance for understanding key aspects of social protest movements such as the Occupy movement. The paper outlines some of Rancière's key concepts, such as the distinction between politics and the police, subjectivity, ‘in-between spaces’, and ‘insubstantial communities’, and attempts to locate his concept of politics within a wider spectrum of political forms in order to bring out its distinctive nature. Links are then made to the ideas and practices of the Occupy movement as an expression of politics that Rancière has recently endorsed. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the critical questions concerning the effectiveness of this style of politics (questions of political organisation and engagement with the state) and the wider consequences for Rancière's concept of radical politics.