Reading Arendt and Rancière's politics against the fugitive politics articulated by Hartman

What is it about?

Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière both, in different ways, say politics involves an active relation to a dominant order; for example, speaking in the public sphere (Arendt), or challenging who counts as an appropriate participant in the public sphere (Rancière). However, this means they're in danger of downplaying the politics of people who evade the public sphere, such as the fugitivity of the enslaved during U.S. plantation slavery. This can be seen when compared to Saidiya Hartman's work, and much recent black studies scholarship more generally.

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Why is it important?

If politics is only understood as in some way maintaining an active relation to a dominant order, then people who are excluded from this order are depoliticised. Recognising their activity as being political, even if they evade an active relation to a dominant order, may help expand and contort dominant understandings of politics.

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