A fragment of Badiou on Ranciere on education and equality

A fragment from Alain Badiou's Les leçons de Jacques Rancière: Savoir et pouvoir après la tempête (2006) translated by Richard Stamp and published on the Jacques Rancière blog on 29 April 2007

"I believe that Rancière’s principal transformation of the question of education is to demolish [destituer] the question “Who educates whom?” It is precisely this question that is poorly posed. Since it leads either to the assumption of the figure of the master, or to the anarchy wherein knowledge and non-knowledge are made equivalent in the power [puissance] of life, whether everyone educates anyone, or no-one educates anyone. This is a classic example of a battle on two fronts. We must accept neither the One of the master, nor the inconsistent multiplicity of spontaneous knowledges. The struggle continues [La lutte continu] against the University and the Party, but also against the advocates of vitalist spontaneity, the partisans of the pure movement, or those of Negri’s multitude."

Also see What is the Left? by Alain Badiou and Ten Thesis on Politics by Jacques Rancière.