Jacques Rancière 
Aisthesis 
Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art

The definitive statement on aesthetics and the history of modernism from one of France’s most renowned philosophers. Composed of a series of scenes that defined modernism,
Aisthesis takes its reader from Dresden in 1764 to New York in 1941. Along the way, we view the Belvedere Torso with Winckelmann, accompany Hegel to the museum and Mallarm� to the Folies-Berg�re, attend a lecture by Emerson, visit exhibitions in Paris and New York, factories in Berlin, and film sets in Moscow and Hollywood. Ranci�re uses these sites and events to ask what becomes art and what comes from it. This incisive study provides a history of artistic modernity far removed from the conventional postures of modernism.

About the author

Zakir Paul is a doctoral candidate in comparative literature at Princeton University. He most recently translated a collection of Blanchot’s political writings.