Presentation

The idea of dedicating a conference to Jacques Rancière, a leading figure in contemporary French thought, has been with us for a long time; it has been the subject of ongoing discussions with the philosopher himself, who has agreed to be part of it and to assist us in organising these three days.

Our primary concern has been not to conceive of these three days as the erection of a ‘monument’: Rancière’s work seemed to us, more than any other, to be the antithesis of any self-celebratory logic. Similarly, an exclusively academic approach – one that grasps the intensity of this work solely by situating it within the broader landscape of contemporary French philosophy from the second half of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century – ran the risk of obscuring the tensions and political stakes that have never ceased to underpin and fuel his thinking.

We therefore set out with the intention of organising something different: to unfold ‘scenes’ – a quintessentially Rancièrean term – and to present them in such a way as not to artificially divide more than half a century of work into distinct ‘moments’, but rather to restore a whole series of overlaps to which Jacques Rancière’s work bears witness in its own way.

We have therefore decided to set the speakers a single, initial constraint: to read Rancière on the basis of – or in the light of – the definition he gives precisely of what a ‘scene’ is: ‘The scene is not the illustration of an idea. It is a small optical machine that shows us thought at work in weaving the links that unite perceptions, affects, names and ideas, in constituting the sensible community that these links weave and the intellectual community that makes this weaving conceivable” (Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art, Galilée, 2011).

Participants

Confirmed participants (in alphabetical order):
Bernard Aspe (Collège International de Philosophie – CIPh), Antonia Birnbaum (Université Paris 8/LLCP), Azucena G. Blanco (Université de Grenade, Espagne), Alison Bouffet (Université Paris Cité), Fabienne Brugère (Université Paris 8/LLCP), Philippe Büttgen (Université Paris 1/ISJPS), Georges Didi-Huberman (EHESS), Elise Domenach (Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière), Stéphane Douailler (Université Paris 8/LLCP), Elie During (Université Paris Nanterre/IRePh), Anders Fjeld (Kulturakademiet, Norvège), Geneviève Fraisse (CNRS/CRAL-EHESS), Bérénice Hamidi (Université Lyon 2), Elise Huchet (Université Paris Cité), Pedro Hussak (Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Brésil), Laurent Jeanpierre (Université Paris 1/CESSP), Sébastien Laoureux (Université de Namur, Belgique), Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1/ISJPS), Yingni Li (doctorante, Université Paris 8/LLCP), Hervé Nicolle (doctorant, Université Paris 1/ISJPS), Adama Ouattara-Sanz (doctorant, Université Paris Nanterre), Mathieu Potte-Bonneville (Centre Pompidou/ENS Lyon), Jacques Rancière (Université Paris 8/LLCP), Judith Revel (Université Paris 1/ISJPS), Alfredo Sanchez (post-doc Paris 8/LLCP), Oana Serban (Université de Bucarest), Bernd Stiegler (Université de Constance) et Dork Zabunyan (Université Paris 8/ESTCA).

Practical details

An international conference open to the public, organised by Judith Revel (ISJPS/IUF, Paris 1), Fabienne Brugère (LLCP, Paris 8) and Dork Zabunyan (ESTCA, Paris 8) with the support of the IEA in Paris, over three days:

15 October 2026, 9.30 am–6 pm at La Fabrique de la flèche, 6 allée des 6 chapelles, 93200 Saint-Denis
16 October 2026, 9.30 am–6 pm at the Institut d’Études Avancées, 17 quai d’Anjou, 75004 Paris
17 October 2026, 9.30 am–6 pm at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 12 place du Panthéon, 75005 Paris

Further information to follow.