Definition#4: Distribution of the sensible+ Dissensus

Fourth in a series where I post influential definitions of some famous concepts

This lucid explication comes from Jay Bernstein. Philosopher Jacques Ranciere has written at length about the relation between aesthetics and politics. He has two key terms: the distribution of the sensible and dissensus.

For Ranciere, the essence of politics is when you have dissensus - people coming to a disagreement rather than an agreement (coming to an agreement would be consensus).

And for Ranciere, the most violent and politically charged disagreements are over what he calls the distribution of the sensible.

Here Ranciere is drawing on a deep tradition of Western philosophy going hundreds of years back which divides knowledge broadly into 2 streams: knowledge you come to know from your reason (mathematics is a paradigmatic eg. of this - you can do maths in your head or imagination without involving your eyes, nose, mouth, ears etc) and knowledge you come to know from your senses (taste, touch, smell, sound and sight). This way of dividing knowledge is retained in the word anaesthetic for example - if aesthetic is a way of perceiving and knowing the world through your senses, anaesthesia is something that blocks your senses and your sensory ways of knowing the world

Ranciere argues that true politics cannot happen unless and until the world appears differently

and in order for the world to appear differently, you need not just rational knowledge, you also need aesthetic knowledge and more particularly a (re)distribution of the sensible - what was formerly ugly, disgusting, kept out of sight etc now becomes exposed and becomes visible and in asserting themselves want to be seen/ percieved/ treated differently.

Ranciere would argue that the civil rights movement in the US for instance was not just about equality for black people - it was about seeing black people and white people not in separate but the same establishments - about seeing white and black people eating side by side each other on lunch counters or sitting side by side each other in classrooms without feeling alarmed or repulsed.

How does this relate to art or aesthetics though?

We could talk for instance about the Dutch Golden Age painters with whom we start getting in European paintings, the limelight/ spotlight ceded to figures who were either absent/ invisible or at best used to provide the background/ backdrop for aristocrats, historical figures or religious figures to pose against - milkmaids, fish mongers, ironsmiths, maidservants, middle class domestic interior scenes - scenes of every day life of ordinary people. With the impressionists you again get a similar move in France - an explosion of who counts and what is worth being painted - a (re)distribution of the sensible - ballerinas, prostitutes, pimps, labourers and workmen, waiters and barmaids.

Such art sparks a dissensus: some people like this new distribution of the sensible - others don't. Even during the Dutch Golden Age - although still life paintings were enormously popular, the Royal Academy never considered them "real art" as it only depicted fruits and vegetables rather than figures from mythology, history or religious scenes.

"If I wanted to look at this crap, I would have just stayed home" - art critics to Jean Baptiste Chardin in the 18th century

Seen this way politics is essentially aesthetic - a contestation over what can be made sensible and in what manner. Conversely art too is always already political. Both art and politics are targeted at the same problem for Ranciere - the problem of how to distribute the sensible so that in Bernstein's words "we see the black rabbit of working class suffering instead of the white duck of middle-class contentment or instead of Abraham's faith, we perceive Isaac's terror" or instead of seeing Ram as a saviour of Sita we begin to see Sita as exiting one kind of cage to enter another.

Today we find similar contestations over "PC culture" - you find people passionately arguing about whether one should tear down monuments and statues of Gandhi or Cecil Rhodes or whether stand-up comedians are allowed to make this or that joke. In short we have a dissensus. If you'd like to see to what extent we've achieved a distribution of the sensible in our recent past check out this clip from 1967 - an interview with a very young Hunter S. Thompson on his book about the Hells Angels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccyu44rsaZo

^^ There's a moment in this interview (from 1967) when this Hell Angels member says "To keep a woman in line, you gotta beat 'em like a rug once in a while". This comment receives applause and laughter from the studio audience - and not just the men, you can hear women laughing too.

I would like to think that what Ranciere is offering us is a vision of both politics and art as a promise rather than necessarily the realization or fulfillment of anything substantial. We are often frustrated when politicians or elected leaders don't keep their promises to us. Yet what I think Ranciere is telling us is that the awakening of a new way of seeing the world is a political achievement in and of itself. Such an awakening will cause rupture with those more comfortable with the old way of seeing the world. Many people today are asking for the police to be defunded. This demand may or may not be met but the very fact that more and more people begin to see the police as a threat rather than as a saviour/ protector - as villains rather than heroes (how many Hollywood movies have we seen where the "cop who doesn't play by the rules" is the hero?) is a great example of the (re)distribution of the sensible.

Like the examples Bernstein gave of Isaac or the rabbit/ duck picture - politics has added nothing new to the world - maybe the police is ultimately not defunded - but what politics has done is made you see a rabbit where you used to see a duck. Politics and art maybe cannot deliver us a new world but giving us a new way of seeing and/ or inhabiting the same world is also a kind of politics - a kind of politics that matters.

There is a way of thinking - a fairly common place way of thinking in which aesthetics might be important but it is not essential i.e. you might want a beautiful house, a pretty dress, a fragrant perfume, tasty food but these are secondary qualities - important but inessential in the sense that you could have a house or a dress or food without these aesthetic qualities. The house, dress or perfume itself is what is essential - what you find pretty, pleasant or beautiful is inessential.

Ranciere is telling us that whether you find that perfume fragrant or obnoxious or that dress pretty or frivolous is not a petty, inconsequential matter of 'personal taste' - it is something that matters a great deal because for Ranciere aesthetics and politics are two sides of the same coin.