The first English translation of Jacques Rancière's first book, in which he explores and begins to move beyond the thought of his mentor, Louis Althusser. 

Jacques Rancière's first major work, Althusser's Lesson appeared in 1974, just as the energies of May 68 were losing ground to the calls for a return to order. Rancière's analysis of Althusserian Marxism unfolds against this background: what is the relationship between the return to order and the enthusiasm which greeted the publication of Althusser's Reply to John Lewis in 1973? How to explain the rehabilitation of a philosophy that had been declared ‘dead and buried on the barricades of May 68'? What had changed? The answer to this question takes the form of a genealogy of Althusserianism that is, simultaneously, an account of the emergence of militant student movements in the ‘60s, of the arrival of Maoism in France, and of how May 68 rearranged all the pieces anew. Encompassing the book's distinctive combination of theoretical analysis and historical description is a question that has guided Rancière's thought ever since: how do theories of subversion become the rationale for order?

"'Emiliano Battista's translation is excellent: readable, judicious in its decisions, and attentive to the complex terminological terrain of the theoretical and political field into which Rancière's book intervened. The translator's notes are a helpful guide to this context.'" - Radical Philosophy

"Rancière tells a compelling story about the political effects both deliberate and unintentional of the relationship between academic Marxist discourse, institutional left politics, and the iconic mass rebellion of nine million workers that would later be known as 'the beginning of the end' of radical French leftism...Rancière's reflections [...] open the space for a critical and politically sensitive dialogue between professors, theorists, activists, students, and workers over the political space which the university has time and time again proven itself to be. Moreover, it forces academic Marxists to consider their generally passive position in relation to these protests." - Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

"A lesson, like a letter, is delivered to someone, to a recipient ... in a specific time and place and, in written form, may like a letter be delayed, so delayed in fact that it misses the addressee...Sometimes a letter does reach its destination." - Cultural Critique 83, Winter 2013