Response

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Notes

1. Rancière disagreed with Althusser not so much about the pedagogy of the classroom (in contrast to Rancière’s figure of the riding school master, the immensely auratic maître à penser apparently granted his students a relative degree of autonomy in their learning) than about the principles by which he allocated knowledge and ignorance (Rancière, 2011).

2. Solange Guénoun, in ‘Jacques Rancière’s Freudian cause’ (2004), identifies this figure as maternal. In her reading of Rancière’s ‘Marthe and René’, separation ‘alone gives the oeuvre its chance’ (Guénoun, 2004). She quotes Rancière: ‘say good-by to the maternal sexual fantasy in order to be able to complete the work’ (Rancière, 2003).

3. Ross quotes Rancière, who called his writing of Althusser’s Lesson ‘the first clearing of the terrain’ for his subsequent reflections (Ross, 1991).