Restructuring the Sensible Fabric: The Political as Aesthetic Space

In the past few decades, the French philosopher Jacques Rancière has elaborated a politicoaesthetic philosophy centered on the idea that the societies we inhabit are organized according to a specific distribution of the sensible which regulates human relations and their places in society. The peculiarity of Rancière’s thought resides in his conception of political space as an aesthetic space: that is, as a sensorium, as a space that is organized and regulated according to specific ways of seeing, saying, and being. Then, ‘the political’ is not an ideological battlefield, but rather a sensible fabric that can be rearranged through practices of dissensus. This article aims at presenting Rancière’s notion of the political to evaluate its emancipatory potential. The focus will be on the impact that this sensible and aesthetic dimension has on marginalized subjectivities, and how it can catalyze alternative processes of subjectivation.