The method of the scene in Jacques Rancière: dissensus, non- hierarchical dispositions and disruption

Abstract

The concept of scene is funda- mental to Jacques Rancière’s elaboration of his method of equality. Rancière uses a fictional rationality to produce montages that bring together images, gestures, texts, speeches and prosaic events in a fable-like composition of mul- tiple temporalities that arise from a series of intervals which deviate from the consensual explanation of the world. This text intendeds to reflect on three specific and intertwined dimensions of the setting up of the scene as a method: dissensus, de-hierarchy and disruption. Such dimensions are interconnected in three operations to be highlighted in this paper: a) the scene as a method that requires a kind of writing based on the construction of montages and intervals; b) the scene as a gesture of apparition of the political subject, of his corporeality and vulnerabilities in search of emancipation; c) the scene as a juxtaposition of times and spaces, configuring an aesthetic-political fabulation capable of rearranging the various elements that give a singular moment its cognitive value, which is also a value of rupture with the endless chain of con- ditions that define the possibilities of an experience. This operation sets in motion a type of emancipation in which Rancière associates the daydreaming with the deviation and destabilization of relations of domination.