A leading philosopher presents a radical manifesto for the future of art and film

In The Future of the Image, Jacques Rancière develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, showing how art and politics have always been intrinsically intertwined. He argues that there is a stark political choice in art: it can either reinforce a radical democracy or create a new reactionary mysticism. For Rancière there is never a pure art: the aesthetic revolution must always embrace egalitarian ideals.

"Like all of Jacques Rancière's texts, The Future of the Image is vertiginously precise." - Les Cahiers du Cinema

"What we see here is Ranciere developing a unique voice as a political theorist." - Bookforum

"French philosopher Jacques Ranciere is a refreshing read for anyone concerned with what art has to do with politics and society." - Art Review

"A series of gratifyingly knotty and close discussions of nineteenth and twentieth century literature, film and painting." - Guardian

"It is too simplistic to say that Jacques Rancière is the anti-Bourdieu. But it is not inaccurate. Robustly conceptual where Bourdieu is empirical, abstractly philosophical where Bourdieu was sociologically precise, he offers a recasting of aesthetic questions that attempts implicitly to rescue the category of the aesthetic from the learned helplessness, or cynical reason, in which Bourdieu left it." - n+1