Alain Badiou (1937–) and Jacques Rancière (1940–) have come to occupy two of the most prominent positions in contemporary theoretical debates. As the junior faculty members at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-St. Denis), they were for a long time in the shadow of the founder of the philosophy department, Michel Foucault (1926–84), and prestigious faculty members like Jean-François Lyotard (1924–98) and Gilles Deleuze (1925–95). Although they are not far in age from Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) and are of the same generation as Jean-Luc Nancy (1940–), Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940–2007) and Étienne Balibar (1942–), the massive importation of ‘post-structuralist theory’ into the anglophone world – often at the expense of other intellectual developments – created the unfortunate illusion, founded on a veritable parallax in transatlantic visibility, that nothing else of great importance had been going on in France since the 1960s. With the passing away of an older generation and the changing fads of the intellectual world, Badiou and Rancière have now increasingly come into the limelight, often as a pair.

However, in spite of the fact that they have worked for years together in very close proximity and have written on one another's work, their interactions have generally been decidedly one-sided. Badiou's major essays on Rancière all deal with the question of politics (with only a few passing comments on aesthetics), but the latter has not – to my knowledge – published an extensive reply to Badiou's account of their fundamental dissensus in this area. Instead, he has written articles berating Badiou for his work on aesthetics, and the latter has graced him with the same silent rejoinder, as far as I know. As illuminating as these polemical writings are, one cannot help but wonder why they have not led to responses and to the development of a veritable intellectual exchange and debate. As things stand, it is as if they have cultivated, perhaps unwittingly, the art of talking past one another. They send salvos from two privileged citadels – politics (Badiou) and aesthetics (Rancière) – with little or no reaction from their apparent adversary. In what follows, I would therefore like to try to stage one part of this debate – which is precisely not a debate – by outlining their respective positions on art, while simultaneously considering some of the important political and historical stakes.