랑시에르의 민주주의와 ‘인민’(demos): 지성적 평등과『프롤레타리아의 밤』

Democracy of Rancière and ‘People’(demos): Intelligent Equality and Proletarian Nights

Jacques Rancière developed his notion of ‘people’(demos) and their importance in the fulfillment of Democracy early in his life from his work of Proletarian Nights: The Worker’s Dream in Nineteenth-Century France. This essay focuses on his ways of establishing a truly democratic system dealing with people, especially people excluded in the system of power of ‘police,’ the so-called ‘people of no share’. This paper will pay attention to how Rancière accuses other theorists such as Marx, Althusser, Foucault, Hardt and Negri for failing to see the role of people in their visions of better life for humans in their societies. This paper tries to shed light on the ways Rancière appreciates people of labor themselves in their effort to develop their intelligence admist of their hard works as laborers, base on his belief of intelligent equality of people. Rancière stresses that people are equipped with intelligent equality without needing to be led by the philosophers as visualized in Plato, because they themselves are poets and philosophers in their own ways. In discussing this aspect, the theorist of education dealing with the less privileged in our society, Jacotot, will be focused with his democratic ideals and belief in the intelligent equality of the people who were supposedly believed to be lacking in intelligence and in need of being guided by the teachers and philosophers. In concluding the paper, similarity and difference between Rancière and Laclau will be discussed so that Rancière’s theory of democracy and people will be defended from the attacks that his theory ignores identity politics and commits some kind of populism with his emphasis on people.