Jacques Rancière, a philosopher known for his work on emancipation, was born in Algiers in 1940. A student of Louis Althusser (1918-1990), Rancière was part of the professor's mentorship of an entire generation of intellectuals at École Normale Supérieure, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in France. Then, in 1969, he began teaching at Vincennes University. Rancière broke with scientific Marxism in his book La leçon d'Althusser (Althusser's Lesson, 1974).
His deep dive into the archives of French workers' history and philosophy led to La Nuit des prolétaires: Archives du rêve ouvrier (Proletarian Nights: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century France, 1981), a book that guided much of his later work. The philosopher argues that the emancipation of the oppressed does not depend on revealing the order that subjugates them but rather on breaking with assigned roles and the opposition between manual and intellectual labor.
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