Abstract
One of Jacques Rancière’s contributions to aesthetics is his re-reading of the history
of aesthetics. Rancière refers to the regime that has identified art as “art” since the end
of the 18th century as “the aesthetic regime of art.” Against the short divisions of art
history by modernism or postmodernism, he seeks to describe the long term.
For Rancière, ideas of “modernism” and “postmodernism” need critique because
the two cannot treat general transformations in the aesthetic regime of art. We will
explain how his thinking can renew the discourses of modernism and postmodernism.
This essay first examines the pre-existing modernist and postmodernist thinking that
Rancière criticizes. It then deals with his view of the history of art history by reading
Le partage du sensible. This reading aims to emphasize the work’s originality with
regard to modernist and postmodernist thinking. We finally investigate his analysis of
political art in Malaise dans l’esthétique, whose arguments offer us a new point of view
fot reconsidering contemporary political art. We conclude this essay by stating that
Rancière recognizes the political effectiveness of the “mixtures” of the heterogeneous
that fundamentally characterize the aesthetic regime.
