The effects of May 68 in Jacques Rancière’s path: the Althusserian dichotomy between science and ideology put in jeopardy

Abstract

After the eruption of May 68 and the creation of the University Vincennes, Jacques Rancière reevaluated his theoretical-political conceptions, as well as his ties to philosopher Louis Althusser and the intellectuals of the Cercle d’Ulm. The dichotomy between a supposedly scientific kind of knowledge, the marxian theory, and ideology, as the Althusserians supported, is jeopardized in favor of valuing the boiling political movements of the 1960s. In the present essay, we are going to analyze this moment of Rancière’s path where the author goes from Althusser’s follower to his critic, by reframing his comprehension about the meaning of social revolt and the conception of knowledge. This debate unfolded in texts like Sur la théorie de l’idéologie: politique d’Althusser and La leçon d’Althusser is not something circumstantial in Rancière’s oeuvre, first appearing as a question striking his thought and still contemplates his current writings: the refusal to the division of knowledge and its intellectual hierarchies and the suspicion towards the conception that politics, to erupt according to the expectations of a certain critical intellectuality, would require the theory as a prerequisite.