'This is an excellent book: pitch-perfect in its construction and trajectory, lucidly written, quietly supportive in providing necessary contextual and background information and nuanced in its critical engagements with RanciFre and his critics. Davis has thought through how best to introduce RanciFre's philosophy and he does it convincingly and compellingly. His book will deservedly become the standard introduction and companion to RanciFre for first-time readers at every level.'-Jay Bernstein, New School for Social Research<BR><BR>'Oliver Davis's Jacques RanciFre is an overview of force and beauty. Working through the whole of RanciFre's reflections on philosophy, politics, historiography and aesthetics, Davis offers a clear and coherent account of work that has changed the way we think about the emergence, the condition and the future of democracy.'-Tom Conley, Harvard University<BR><BR>This book is a critical introduction to contemporary French philosopher Jacques RanciFre. It is the first introduction in any language to cover all of his major work and offers an accessible presentation and searching evaluation of this significant contributions to the fields of politics, pedagogy, history, literature, film theory and aesthetics.<BR><BR>Oliver Davis traces the emergence of RanciFre's thought over the last forty-five years and situates it within the diverse intellectual contexts in which it intervenes. Beginning with his egalitarian critique of his former teacher Louis Althusser, the book tracks the subsequent elaboration of RanciFre's highly original conception of equality. This approach reveals that a grasp of RanciFre's early archival and historiographical work is vital for a full understanding both of his later politics and of his ongoing investigation of art and aesthetics.<BR><BR>Along the way, this book explains and analyses key terms in RanciFre's very distinctive philosohical lexicon, including the 'police' order, 'disagreement', 'political sujectivation', 'literity', the 'part which has no part', the 'regimes of art', and 'the distribution of sensory'.<BR><BR>Davis shows that RanciFre's work sets a new standard in contestatory critique and reflects on the philosophical implications of his singular project.