Police Actions in Aesthetics: Rancière Reading Deleuze and Lyotard on Art

This essay addresses Jacques Rancière’s attempt to critique notions of resistance invoked by Jean-François Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze. It focuses in particular on Rancière’s efforts to contain Deleuze within a shallow account of the aesthetic tradition of the past two centuries and to disqualify a post-Heideggerian thought of difference in philosophy of art. It ultimately takes issue with Rancière’s effort to police the function of modern art.