An Indistinct Fear: Jacques Ranciere, Mary Shelley, and the Aesthetics of the Unrepresentable

Abstract:Public debate surrounding the "unrepresentability" of historical acts of violence urgently calls into question representation in the public spaces of art and politics. This article argues that framing the unrepresentable in ethical terms perpetuates the divisions and ideologies that contemporary politics seeks to rectify. As an alternative, we draw on Jacques Rancière's critique of ethics to outline an aesthetics of unrepresentability rooted in an indeterminate act of bearing witness. We outline a non-ethical politics of the unrepresentable through a politicized reading of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to show how Rancière's concept of political dissensus helps us witness the violent erasure of the "spark of life" that we glimpse in unrepresentable events and figures.