Puggioni, Raffaela
(2025)
Which Intelligible Words? Reading Femicide Through Rancière’s Concept of ‘La Mésentente’.
Philosophies, 10 (2).
p. 30.
ISSN 2409-9287
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Abstract
While Jacques Rancière’s concept of the political, democracy, emancipation, equality and aesthetic have significantly (re)shaped many recent debates, his notion of dis-agreement—in its French formulation of ‘mésentente’, meaning the fact of not hearing, and/or of not understanding—has received relatively little attention. This article argues that if politics, as Rancière suggests, arise from a novel perceptual universe and if dis-agreement entails not-hearing and/or not-understanding, then “speaking politics”—the very act of breaking away from the dominant configuration of the police order—might be perceived as a noisy sound rather than as coherent and intelligible words. Drawing on Rancière’s concept of mésentente, this article examines the noisy, and largely unintelligible, protests sparked by the violent femicide of Giulia Cecchettin which occurred in Italy in 2023. Ultimately, it raises the following questions: which words are intelligible? Does intelligibility depend on the voice of the speaking subjects? Or does it hinge on the (un)familiarity of the vision they project? How can acts of politics be recognized if the words used are unintelligible?
Item Type: | Article |
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Keywords: | politics | dis-agreement | misunderstanding | speaking subjects | femicide | Italy |
Subjects: | Social Sciences and humanities > Social Sciences > Social Sciences (General) Social Sciences and humanities > Social Sciences > Political Science |
JGU School/Centre: | Jindal School of International Affairs |
Depositing User: | Dharmveer Modi |
Date Deposited: | 06 Mar 2025 13:44 |
Last Modified: | 06 Mar 2025 13:44 |
Official URL: | https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies10020030 |
URI: | https://pure.jgu.edu.in/id/eprint/9216 |
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