Chronicles of Consensual Times

In this fascinating collection Jacques Ranciere one of the world's most important and influential living philosophers explores the nature of consensus in contemporary politics. <br/><br/>Consensus does not mean peace. Instead it refers to a map of operations of war of a topography of the visible of what is possible and what can be thought in which war and peace live side-by-side. Lying at the heart of these consensual times are new forms of racism and ethnic cleansing humanitarian wars and wars against terror. Consensus also implies using time in a way that sees in it a thousand devious turns. This is evident in the incessant diagnoses of the present and of amnesiac politics in the farewells to the past the commemorations and the calls to remember. <br/><br/>But all these twists and turns tend toward the same goal: to show that there is only one reality to which we are obliged to consent. What stands in the way of this undertaking is politics. These chronicles aim to re-open that space wherein politics once more becomes thinkable.