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We can thus dream of a society of the emancipated that would be a society of artists. · Aug 28, 15:14
Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, p 71
“We can thus dream of a society of the emancipated that would be a society of artists. Such a society would repudiate the division between those who know and those who don’t, between those who possess or don’t possess the property of intelligence. It would only know minds in action: people who do, who speak about what they are doing, and who thus transform all their works into ways of demonstrating the humanity that is in them as in everyone. Such people would know that no one is born with more intelligence than his neighbor, that the superiority that someone might manifest is only the gruit of as tenacious an application to working with words as another might show to working with tools; that the inferiority of someone else is the consequence of circumstances that didn’t compel him to seek harder. In short, they would know that the perfection someone directs toward his own art is no more than the particular application of the power common to all reasonable beings, the one that each person feels when he withdraws into that privacy of consciousness where lying makes no sense. They would know that man’s dignity is independent of his position, that “man is not born to a particular position, but is meant to be happy in himself, independent of what fate brings,” (26) and that the reflection of feeling that shines in the eyes of a wife, a son, or a dear friend represents to the gaze of a sensitive enough sould adequate satisfaction.
“Such people would not be occupied creating phalansteries where vocations would correspond to passions, communities of equals, economic organizations harmoniously distributing functions and resources. To unite humankind, there is no better link than this identical intelligence in everyone.”
(26) J. Jacotot, Langue Maternelle, p. 243