Equality and Freedom in Ranciere and Foucault

Responding to the increasing need for new and peaceful forms of emancipation, Stuart Blaney offers a unique solution in the synergy between two pioneering strands of continental philosophy: Michael Foucault’s ideas on freedom and Jacques Rancière’s ideas on equality. Building a dialogue between these two thinkers, Blaney presents new perspectives on their work and a clear picture that emancipation comes from everyday practices rather than any particular movement or revolution. In exploring these combined views of equality and freedom, Blaney draws on some of the central facets of both concepts, including revolution, disagreement, care for the self, free speech and stoicism. To put these ideas into a practical framework of real, lived experience, we are introduced to the figure of Louis-Gabriel Gauny the 19th-century worker-poet and self confessed plebeian philosopher. Gauny is a nexus for Rancière’s and Foucault’s ideas; his life exemplifying a dual mode of existence in-between conformity and political revolution. This lived philosophy of equality and freedom shows the strong synergy between the two concepts, with one reinforcing the other and strengthening their efficacy as forms of emancipatory practice.