It is frequently said that we are living through the end of politics the end of social
upheavals the end of utopian folly. Consensual realism is the order of the day. But political
realists remarks Jacques Ranciere are always several steps behind reality and the only thing
which may come to an end with their dominance is democracy. In these subtle and perceptive
essays Ranciere argues that since Plato and Aristotle politics has always constructed itself
as the art of ending politics that realism is itself utopian and that what has succeeded the
polemical forms of class struggle is not the wisdom of a new millennium but the return of old
fears criminality and chaos. Whether he is discussing the confrontation between Mitterrand and
Chirac French working-class discourse after the 1830 revolution or the ideology of recent
student mobilizations his aim is to restore philosophy to politics and give politics back its
original and necessary meaning: the organization of dissent.
