Jacques Rancière’s Left-wing Literary Theory and Mao Zedong’s Thought on Literature and Art

Abstract The publication of French translations of Mao’s canonical works in the 1950s and 1960s sparked interest among French-left intellectuals. This paper investigates Rancière’s appropriation and reinvention of Mao’s thinking as an illustration of the exchange between Maoism and contemporary French left-wing theories on literature and art. First, drawing on Mao’s “mass line,” Rancière values the autonomy of the people rather than the leadership of the Althusserian intellectual elites. Second, Rancière’s “part of those that have no part” differs from Mao’s “the people” in the concept’s scope and in how they are transformed into political subjects. Third, deeply indebted to Mao’s “the people’s literature and art” that underscores the centrality of ordinary people and their lives, Rancière’s theory of politics of literature unleashes the liberating force of art and literature for the sensible of ordinary people, and calls for overthrowing the hierarchy of class politics.