In this short book, Jacques Rancière takes stock of the state of contemporary politics and examines current developments in the light of his writings. Rancière takes issue with what he sees as the consolidation in recent years of an increasingly oligarchic class of professional politicians within the system of representative democracy, while simultaneously objecting to leftist animosity towards electoral politics. He discusses a wide range of contemporary political movements and figures, from Nuit debout and Marine le Pen to Occupy, Trump, Syriza and Podemos, and he offers a trenchant critique of a variety of ideas and thinkers associated with radical politics, such as the ideas of immaterial labour and cognitive capitalism and the concept of insurrection put forward by the Invisible Committee. But above all he talks about the time in which it makes sense to talk about all this, a time for which history has made no promises and the past has left no lessons, only moments to be extended as far as possible. In politics, there are only presents. It is at every moment that the bonds of unequal servitude are renewed or that the paths of emancipation are invented.

Presented in the form of a dialogue between Jacques Rancière and Eric Hazan, this timely reflection by one of the most influential radical thinkers writing today will be of interest to a wide readership.

Jacques Rancière is a leading French philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Paris-St. Denis. He is the author of many books on politics and aesthetics including Hatred of Democracy, The Emancipated Spectator, The Politics of Literature and The Edges of Fiction.

?Jacques Ranciere?s work is renowned, as he once put it, for ?leaving the noisy stage of political claims and doctrines and sinking into the depths of the social?. But at the same time, he firmly rejects the simplistic oppositions to which so many thinkers fall prey ? overthrowing institutions versus pre-figurative practice, art versus everyday life. In this lively discussion with Eric Hazan, Ranciere displays once again the power of his subtle form of social and philosophical analysis, illuminating some of the central questions of democracy, representation and political strategy that confront us today.?

Peter Dews, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex