L'appel De La Promesse. Ranciere Et Badiou

Abstract

This article  examines the convergences and divergences between the political philosophies of Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, two key contemporary thinkers of emancipation. Critiquing representative parliamentary democracy as a form of oligarchy, both philosophers defend an egalitarian axiom that seeks to affirm the "partless" (sans-parts) or the invisible. However, while Badiou bases political rupture on fidelity to an event through organized collectives , Rancière emphasizes a politics of subjectivation and "heterology," distinct from institutional structures.

The study further explores Rancière’s aesthetic turn, centered on the "distribution of the sensible" (partage du sensible) and "disidentification" (désidentification). Moving beyond the mimetic regime and theories of the "unrepresentable," Rancière illustrates how art—especially cinema—reconfigures politics by enabling individuals from different social backgrounds to inhabit the same image and historical spacetime. The paper demonstrates how both art and politics uphold the democratic promise that "anyone" can become an agent of history.