Which Intelligible Words? Reading Femicide Through Rancière’s Concept of ‘La Mésentente’

Puggioni, Raffaela (2025) Which Intelligible Words? Reading Femicide Through Rancière’s Concept of ‘La Mésentente’. Philosophies, 10 (2). p. 30. ISSN 2409-9287

[thumbnail of 23. Which intelligible words.pdf] Text
23. Which intelligible words.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (295kB)

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
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

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item
View Item