The Future of the Image, Paperback

In The Future of the Image, Jacques Ranci re develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, showing how art and politics have always been intrinsically intertwined. Covering a range of art movements, filmmakers such as Godard and Bresson, and thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Adorno, Barthes, Lyotard and Greenberg, Ranci re shows that contemporary theorists of the image are suffering from religious tendencies.

He argues that there is a stark political choice in art: it can either reinforce a radical democracy, or create a new reactionary mysticism. For Ranci re there is never a pure art: the aesthetic revolution must always embrace egalitarian ideals.

About the Author:

Jacques Ranci re is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. His books include The Politics of Aesthetics, On the Shores of Politics, Short Voyages to the Land of the People, The Nights of Labor, Staging the People, and The Emancipated Spectator.

Gregory Elliott is a member of the editorial collective of Radical Philosophy and author of Althusser: The Detour of Theory and Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Decay of Labour England?.