Jacques Rancière. The Destiny of Images

In 2008, Jacques Rancière published his work “The Destiny of Images” (Le destin des images), in which he develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, pointing out that art and politics have always been intrinsically linked. The philosopher emphasizes that there is a distinctly political choice in art: it can either strengthen radical democracy or create a new reactionary mysticism.

The book includes five essays with subsections: “The Destiny of Images” (2001), “Sentence, Image, Story” (2002), “Painting in Text” (1999), “The Surface of Design” (2002), “Is There Anything Unrepresentable?” (2002), which the author wrote between 1999 and 2002.

In these texts, the philosopher addresses visual art – painting, cinema, and especially a relatively recent medium – audiovisual installation. In all these artistic expressions, the image plays a significant role. Reviewing a series of art movements and the works of theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, etc., J. Rancière points out that theories about the contemporary image are derived from religion in their form and are saturated with references from it.

Santa Remere on Jacques Rancière's book "The Destiny of Images": https://satori.lv/article/vienkarsos-vardos-par-ransjeru

Title: The Destiny of Images
Author: Jacques Rancière
Publisher: The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art
Language: Latvian
Release date: 2020