The site of this transposition, Ranciere states elsewhere, is the “dividing line that has been the object of [his] constant study” (The Philosopher and His Poor, 225) between a particular distribution of the sensible and the dissensus it calls for out of which a unique subject of politics emerges. Ranciere defines ‘politics’ as “an activity of reconfiguration of that which is given to the sensible” (‘Dissenting Words: A Conversation with Jacques Ranciere,’ 115). Only a subject of politics can reconfigure a particular distribution of the sensible, cognizant of the dividing line, which subverts a given perceptual criterion for the right kind of understanding the sensible. The sensible is the only access to reality and an immanent one, characterized by our distinct relation to words (and images) that make up the sensory field of experience. What is given to the sensible is an outcome of a particular sensory reality configuration that regulates social behavior through the disciplining power of words and images. In this sense, words and images are immediately political. However, the immediate political nature of words and images does not rule out the significance of nuances, where the dividing line comes to light.
Nuances are political potentialities in the sense that they bring to light the truth about the sensory field, namely, as Plato once said, ‘words’ require a father to express them because they do not speak (Phaedrus, 275d5-e5). In line with his concept or notion of mute speech (parole muette), Ranciere argues that there is no structural or ontological relation between words and the uses we make of them, let alone, the relation between words and what we perceive (images). Nevertheless, words and images are the social order’s fabric in the sense that they bring contents to perception, or give form to experience. This is not to ignore the fact that, again, words do not speak; they are indifferent to the form and content we give and divest. In the final analysis, words (and images as well) put to question the immediacy or taken-for-granted nature of the political.
Incidentally, Ranciere’s examination of the historical progress of literature gives this concept or notion of mute speech its distinctive relation to the role of literariness in transforming reality. By revisiting Aristotle’s concept of Man as animal rationale, Ranciere explores the nuanced definition of Man by bringing to light the exact status of this animal as a reasoning agent, namely, its literariness. This means Man is an animal “caught in the circuit of literariness that undoes the relationships between the order of words and the order of bodies that determine the place of each” (Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy, 27). In the political field, Ranciere would transpose literariness to the notion of democracy or equality. In a sense: equality is literariness. Here, literariness shares a liminal function with mute speech. Both are indifferent to a given relationship between words and bodies. In the political realm: between speech acts and the community’s material life. The mark of literariness is its potentiality as a specific agent of politics to reconfigure this given relationship, a sign of its indifference. Therefore, the agent of literature has the power to reconstitute the political by examining the structural features of language to empower individuals to transcend their given place in the social order. Individuals can transcend their place in society by imitating (my interpretation in light of my bias for Benjamin) the function of parole muette, its mimetic faculty, stimulated and awakened by literariness, to become similar to the indifference of words and images.
As literature develops, the stimulation and awakening of this faculty also vary from one historical period (of understanding the sensory field) to another. Ranciere would come up with an ingenious formula—the three regimes of arts or aesthetics, in short, the three historical frames of reference for understanding the significance of literariness to the transformation of reality through the sensory field. We have to underscore here that in each supposed period of literariness, the role of mute speech varies according to how it functions in each. In the ethical regime, mute speech breaks the division between truth and representation, reality and simulacrum, by exposing the arbitrariness of the dividing line that subsists between them. However, it was Plato himself who would give us a clue—truth is justified true belief (Ranciere does not underscore this point, so I am here inserting my interpretation). Mute speech teased the unconscious out of Plato—truth is a lie, yet a noble one. But even with this admission, Plato’s words would create a new image of literariness, at the expense of ignoring Plato’s words—let us not forget that words are indifferent even to their host.
In Aristotle’s intervention, the ethical regime would reconstitute the kind of mute speech that exposed Plato’s lie, revealing its real aim, that is, as Ranciere explained earlier, to “[undo] the relationship between the order of words and the order of bodies” (Dis-agreement, 37). The undoing will be in service of the new definition of Man, whose essence lies in the “circuit of literariness” in favor of the ethical demand of the polis. The demand of the polis is practical rather than metaphysical (although this would constitute a new configuration of mute speech against Aristotle who would assign the metaphysical to the supervision of experts, unlike Plato who suggested many times that metaphysics is reachable in the dream world, practically accessible to everyone). This will imply that literariness is no longer ‘justified true belief’ (in Plato) because justification requires propriety in dialectical training. Instead, it becomes a question of howness, its technique, its method, its syntax as a model of reconfiguring the social in terms of setting up new ways of speaking, doing, and being.
Over the old Platonic class determination, social class determines one’s place in the order of the sensible. Aristotle would prefer mastery of the syntactic or organizing power of language (he called it the ‘poetic function’) extended to the social field. (Aristotle is, therefore, a specific subject of politics who broke the Platonic partition of the sensible that has for a time become the dominant ‘sense’ of the political). This part of Aristotle’s intervention would represent the transition to the representative regime of arts whereby the poetic function, characterized by logical reduction of time and space to give the overall effect of unity, becomes the new configuration of the sensory concerning cause-effect relations, which anticipate the rise of modern instrumental reason.
The transition to the aesthetic regime would complement the emergent rise of a new parole muette. In a way, the aesthetic regime would mimic the exact function of words. If words are not equal to the uses that a partition of the sensible gives and divests, they can become potential sites of democracy. Words are not exhausted by their intended meanings. Here, the aesthetic regime satisfies literariness in undoing established patterns of communication, referential sign-system, or agreed-upon system of signs (in Benjamin’s description). By their constituting and regulating power, they can distribute social roles and subject positions. In the aesthetic regime, literariness can redistribute social roles and positionalities into unexpected modes of speaking, being and doing; hence, a new partition of the sensible, but devoid of a telos. Literariness has no end to achieve, which compliments the indifference of words to origin, agency, purpose, and direction.
We have here the autonomy of words that can destabilize the hierarchy of genres or aesthetic style and merit. In short: a literary suicide, the new way to imitate the radicality of mute speech, loyal to no word. As Ranciere would argue in the case of Bovary’s literary suicide, Flaubert had to kill his protagonist for confusing her everyday style with the autonomy of reality, fashioned in the autonomy of words which stylizes the sensible (in the aesthetic regime). Bovary had to be killed for her style, her way of speaking, being, and doing, which amounts to the becoming similar to everyday life (the mass function of kitsch, which states that the everyday has the right to become art). In Benjamin: the technical reproduction of art in modern times. So far, this is the positive side of Ranciere’s description of the aesthetic regime–one has the license to separate the bad eggs from the good ones. In this sense, the parole muette of the aesthetic regime emancipates the words from Emma Bovary, whose style with words—her ‘ways’ of speaking, doing, and being, in short, words are not simple words—also suppress their desire for silence. The emancipation brings their autonomous function to life, thus, bringing them to life in the style of “self-suppression of literature” (“The Politics of Literature,” 22), the equivalent of the everyday. In this context, Bovary mistakes her everydayness for each word of the day.
Unfortunately, there are no right people, no right subjects of politics for Ranciere, people from whom, arguably, it will not make sense to emancipate words and images. There are only wrong people. Ranciere describes the wrong people as “the mode of subjectification in which the assertion of equality takes its political shape” (Dis-agreement, 39). Even supposing, Ranciere would have to mean equality as the right kind of equality. Not the equality professed by Emma Bovary, who must be killed so that words could be emancipated from her way of speaking, doing, and being, reproducing herself as equal to art, albeit, a false sense of art in everyday life, art + life = kitsch. Presumably, words alone know the right kind and the only sense of equality. They do not care whether or not they know if equality (such as among themselves) even exists. In other words, words only know inequality.
Nevertheless, here, Ranciere unlocks the metaphysical secret of words—he has become the words themselves, indifferent. He hears their secret. The secret is it is better to be indifferent like words, or champion their cause, such as to kill the Bovary’s of the world (the right conviction, presumably) than being killed (no less by words, of course) for wrongly assuming what words know. However, since ‘Bovary’ is a word in the sense of her being part of the part-taking, the partition of the literary sensible, she would have to cry foul. She has the right to existence, her equal share to the partition. There is no right as opposed to wrong people. Ranciere qualifies: “The concept of wrong is thus not linked to any theatre of victimization” (Ibid.). In the political, Bovary’s cause in this configuration is no different from the position of hardline advocates and ideologues of the Right. “We, people of the Right, are also the wrong ones.”
Words, at best, in the aesthetic regime, have the final say: keep quiet. From here, and with words on offer, they take over as the police: “You have the right to remain silent.”
References
Jacques Ranciere, Dissenting Words: Interviews with Jacques Ranciere, ed. and trans. Emiliano Battista (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).
_______. “The Politics of Literature,” in SubStance 103, 33 1 (2004): 10-24.
_______. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
'Being is the scandal of Nature waiting for a new host' 