Contemporary art often likes to name-check philosophy and theory as a source of kudos, but it’s often surprising how few living thinkers have a serious influence in contemporary art debates, reaching both academic and general readerships. French critic Jacques Rancière, however, can claim that kind of influence. From The Politics of Aesthetics (2004), through The Emancipated Spectator (2009), to Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (2010), the seventy-two-year-old professor’s ideas on how art intersects with the political and social worlds have won him an increasingly international and youthful readership who are keen to find a way past the pessimism of earlier postmodern theory.