From The Emancipated Spectator

Among leftist cultural critics, it often believed that workers and intellectuals are natural allies in the fight for social change. Philosopher Jacques Rancière has been one of the most outspoken critics of this view, suggesting that the Marxist philosophers construct a romanticized notion of the working class as in need of emancipation by enlightened intellectuals. The counterargument— that the intelligentsia should not speak for and presume to know what’s best for the masses—runs through much of Rancière’s work, from The Philosopher and His Poor (1983) to The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991). In The Emancipated Spectator (2008), the philosopher extends this principle to theatre, arguing that the artist should not presume to know what the spectator needs. Contrary to Bertolt Brecht (see chapter 35), Augusto Boal (see chapter 39), and others who draw an opposition between individual spectatorship and communal participation, Rancière argues that individual spectatorship “is not some passive condition that we should transform into activity. It is our normal condition” (321). A truly progressive theatre, then, is one that respects the individual spectator’s ability to think for his or herself.