6 Quotes by Jacques Rancière

A material thing is first of all “the only bridge of communication between two minds.” The bridge is a passage, but it is also distance maintained. The materiality of the book keeps two minds at an equal distance, whereas explication is the annihilation of one mind by another.

Whoever teaches without emancipating stultifies.

Keeping a monopoly on legitimate violence is still the proven best way to limit violence and allow reason some asylum where it can be freely practiced.

It is easier to compare oneself, to establish social exchange as that swapmeet of glory and contempt where each person receives a superiority in exchange for the inferiority he confesses to.

To explain something to someone is first of all to show him he cannot understand it by himself.

Poetic language that knows itself as such doesn't contradict reason. On the contrary, it reminds each speaking subject not to take the narrative of his mind's adventures for the voice of truth. Every speaking subject is the poet of himself and of things. Perversion is produced when the poem is given as something other than a poem, when it wants to be imposed as truth, when it wants to force action.