In Masses, Classes, Ideas, well-known French philosopher Etienne Balibar explores the relationship between abstract philosophy and concrete politics. The book gathers together for the first time in English nine of Balibar's most influential essays written over the last decade, which have been carefully revised and reordered in logical succession with an original preface. Balibar discusses the influence of political philosophy on collective movements, touching on issues of religious and class struggle, nationalism and racism, the rights of man and the citizen, and property as a social relation. He seeks to explain the novelty of Marxist philosophy and political theory with respect to the classical doctrines of "state" and "revolution." Masses, Classes, Ideas also examines the limitations and aporias which have become manifest in Marxist philosophy and critically assesses its legacy, offering a provocative contribution to the project of renewing democratic theory.

In order to grasp what it means to call Rousseau an "author" of the Revolution, as so many revolutionaries did, it is necessary to take full measure of the difficulties of literary interpretation to which Rousseau's work gives rise, particularly around such a charged term as "author."
" On Jean-Jacques Rousseau" shows that Rousseau's texts consistently generate a division in their own reading, a division both designated and masked by the fiction of authorship. These divisions can occur successively--as in the narrative reversals and discontinuities characteristic of Rousseau's fictional and autobiographical works--or simultaneously, in the form of incompatible attempts to apply the lessons of a single text to an urgent historical moment. Given the structure of these texts, their "influence" can only occur in an equally paradoxical form. Rousseau's contribution to revolutionary thinking lies in his conceptualization of the constitutive function of misunderstanding and narrative discontinuity, in history and political action as well as in literature.
Such misunderstandings and discontinuities are particularly well illustrated by the vicissitudes of the reading of Rousseau's texts during the revolutionary period, a moment when "readings" occurred as political programs. The Revolution enacted Rousseau precisely to the extent that revolutionaries could not agree on what action he called for. He is "one of the first authors of the Revolution" not because he was one of its causes, but because he provided the terms in which the logic of the revolutionary process becomes intelligible.

In order to grasp what it means to call Rousseau an "author" of the Revolution, as so many revolutionaries did, it is necessary to take full measure of the difficulties of literary interpretation to which Rousseau's work gives rise, particularly around such a charged term as "author."
" On Jean-Jacques Rousseau" shows that Rousseau's texts consistently generate a division in their own reading, a division both designated and masked by the fiction of authorship. These divisions can occur successively--as in the narrative reversals and discontinuities characteristic of Rousseau's fictional and autobiographical works--or simultaneously, in the form of incompatible attempts to apply the lessons of a single text to an urgent historical moment. Given the structure of these texts, their "influence" can only occur in an equally paradoxical form. Rousseau's contribution to revolutionary thinking lies in his conceptualization of the constitutive function of misunderstanding and narrative discontinuity, in history and political action as well as in literature.
Such misunderstandings and discontinuities are particularly well illustrated by the vicissitudes of the reading of Rousseau's texts during the revolutionary period, a moment when "readings" occurred as political programs. The Revolution enacted Rousseau precisely to the extent that revolutionaries could not agree on what action he called for. He is "one of the first authors of the Revolution" not because he was one of its causes, but because he provided the terms in which the logic of the revolutionary process becomes intelligible.

Throughout his career, shaped by a notable collaboration with Louis Althusser, Jacques Ranci?re has continually unsettled political discourse, particularly by examining its relationship to aesthetics. Like Michel Foucault, he broke with his many of his predecessors to upend dominant twentieth-century historical narratives and critical theories. Often overlooked in the canon of his works, "Mute Speech" contains the critical seeds of Ranci?re's most provocative assertions, challenging the intellectual orthodoxy that had come to define the nature of art and representation.

Arguing that art is neither inherently political nor colonized by politics, Ranci?re casts art and politics as "distributions of the sensible," or configurations of what are visible and invisible in experience. Through an original reinterpretation of German Romanticism and phenomenology, especially the work of its most prominent figures Kant and Hegel, and engaging with the thought of Germaine de Sta?l, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Blanchot, among others, Ranci?re reevaluates conceptions of art in various decades, from the classical age of representation to the modern, anti-representational turn and its promise of political transformation. Rather than dwell on modernity's "crisis of representation," he celebrates the triumph of realism in modern aesthetics, which for him is the true representative art. Opening radical new vistas onto the history of art and philosophy, Ranci?re pioneers a theory of aesthetics in which democratic politics constitute the essence of art.

Throughout his career, shaped by a notable collaboration with Louis Althusser, Jacques Ranci?re has continually unsettled political discourse, particularly by examining its relationship to aesthetics. Like Michel Foucault, he broke with his many of his predecessors to upend dominant twentieth-century historical narratives and critical theories. Often overlooked in the canon of his works, "Mute Speech" contains the critical seeds of Ranci?re's most provocative assertions, challenging the intellectual orthodoxy that had come to define the nature of art and representation.

Arguing that art is neither inherently political nor colonized by politics, Ranci?re casts art and politics as "distributions of the sensible," or configurations of what are visible and invisible in experience. Through an original reinterpretation of German Romanticism and phenomenology, especially the work of its most prominent figures Kant and Hegel, and engaging with the thought of Germaine de Sta?l, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Blanchot, among others, Ranci?re reevaluates conceptions of art in various decades, from the classical age of representation to the modern, anti-representational turn and its promise of political transformation. Rather than dwell on modernity's "crisis of representation," he celebrates the triumph of realism in modern aesthetics, which for him is the true representative art. Opening radical new vistas onto the history of art and philosophy, Ranci?re pioneers a theory of aesthetics in which democratic politics constitute the essence of art.

"This is clearly one of the most prodigious political accomplishments of our time. In open and engaging prose, Balibar offers a serious and thoroughgoing study of the problem of what constitutes citizenship under changing conditions of immigration in Europe. His critique is accompanied by a political vision of democracy at once chastened and hopeful."--Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley, author of "The Psychic Life of Power"

"An extremely important book. Anything Balibar writes is sure to find an extremely eager audience in the United States. But the subject of this book--the new politics of immigration and racism in a newly unifying Europe, the very real threat that unification will mean a European version of apartheid, and the possibility that a transnational political counter-subject ("we, the people of Europe") can emerge to oppose globalization--is even more topical than those Balibar has led us to expect from him. His striking and sometimes dazzling commentaries on the various frameworks and discourses at play will be of immediate interest to readers in a wide range of fields."--Bruce Robbins, Columbia University, author of "The Servant's Hand"

"Together these two volumes constitute an outstanding contribution to the field. They present the views and arguments of the major philosophers of the period with unmatched clarity and subject them to deep and critical scrutiny. In my view there is no other work on the history of twentieth-century century analytic philosophy that matches it in its scope, depth, and elegance."--Ali Kazmi, University of Calgary

As one of Louis Althusser's most brilliant students in the 1960s, Etienne Balibar contributed to the theoretical collective masterpiece of Reading Capital. Since then he has established himself among the most subtle philosophical and political thinkers in France. In Politics and the Other Scene Balibar deepens and extends the work he first developed with Immanuel Wallerstein in Race, Nation, Class. Exploring the theme of universalism and difference, he addresses such topical questions as European racism, the notion of the border, whether a European citizenship is possible or desirable, violence and politics, and identity and emancipation.