The future of the image

Lauded by major contemporary artists and philosophers, Jacques Ranci re's work returns politics to its central place in understanding art. In The Future of the Image, Jacques Ranci re develops a fascinating new concept of the image incontemporary art, showing how art and politics have always beenintrinsically intertwined. Covering a range of art movements, filmmakers such as Godard and Bresson, andthinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Adorno, Barthes, Lyotard andGreenberg, Ranci re shows that contemporary theorists of the image aresuffering from religious tendencies. He argues that there is a starkpolitical choice in art: it can either reinforce a radical democracy, or create a new reactionary mysticism. For Ranci re there is never apure art: the aesthetic revolution must always embrace egalitarianideals.