Proletarian Nights, previously published in English as Nights of Labor and one of Ranciere's most important works, dramatically reinterprets the Revolution of 1830, contending that workers were not rebelling against specific hardships and conditions but against the unyielding predetermination of their lives. Through a study of worker-run newspapers, letters, journals, and worker-poetry, Ranciere reveals the contradictory and conflicting stories that challenge the coherence of these statements celebrating labor.
This updated edition includes a new preface by the author, revisiting the work twenty years since its first publication in France.
Proletarian Nights, previously published in English as Nights of Labor and one of Ranciere's most important works, dramatically reinterprets the Revolution of 1830, contending that workers were not rebelling against specific hardships and conditions but against the unyielding predetermination of their lives. Through a study of worker-run newspapers, letters, journals, and worker-poetry, Ranciere reveals the contradictory and conflicting stories that challenge the coherence of these statements celebrating labor.
This updated edition includes a new preface by the author, revisiting the work twenty years since its first publication in France.
A classic text by Rancière on the intellectual thought of French workers in the 19th century
Jacques Rancière is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. His books include The Politics of Aesthetics, On the Shores of Politics, Short Voyages to the Land of the People, The Nights of Labor, Staging the People, and The Emancipated Spectator.
With its innovative approach, Rancière's difficult and provocative
interpretation is essential reading.
*Choice*
Rancière's brilliant book ... locates the nineteenth-century
origins of European socialism not in the noble desire of artisans
to control their own labor but in the utopian visions of
working-class poets who wanted to be free of labor altogether ...
This is a powerful, piercing, and radical argument ... Rancière has
merged his philosophical and historical interests into a profound
commentary on the possibilities of human freedom and of the
violence done to those possibilities in freedom's name.
*Oral History Review*
Drury's translation puts it into English as directly and
comprehensibly as possible. It's a difficult job to do well, and
the translator's work goes a long way toward making the book more
readable.
*Book News*
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