Ranciere and the poetics of the social sciences

This article reviews the significance of Jacques Ranciere's work for methodological debates in the social sciences, and education specifically. It explores the implications of constructing research as an aesthetic, rather than primarily a methodological, endeavour. What is at stake in this distinction is the means by which research intervenes in social order and how it assumes political significance, with Ranciere arguing against a notion of science as the other of ideology. Ranciere's argument for a democratic research practice organized around a 'method of equality' is situated in relation to openly ideological feminist ethnography. The implications of Ranciere's work for investigating affect in academic discourse and subjectification in education are reviewed in the conclusion.