From Ben:

[Note: for unknown reasons, the online text jumps from page 75 to page 82, and I have no way of finding out what the missing section is. Thus, I fear we are missing a crucial part of the chapter’s argument. Also, I do not focus on many of the key points in the chapter, only those that especially caught my fancy; please feel free to discuss other key points in the comments.]

I especially enjoyed this chapter, because it is one about application; specifically, how application applies to mindset. After focusing primarily on abstract principles of intelligence and inequality, Ranciere offers a somewhat jolting first sentence to beginning chapter 4: “There is no such thing as a possible society. There is only the society that exist” (75). This is significant for Ranciere’s approach to intelligence, because, as has been repeated many times thus far, it is better to work from a principle than towards it. In a rhetorical tweak of Platonic dualism, European idealism, and Jacotot’s contemporary Romanticism, Ranciere argues for a collapse between the immediate and the vision, the dream and the reality. Read the rest of this entry »