Jacques Rancière, Kristin Ross (translator) · 1987 · PDF · Calibre ID 8939
Resurfaced in The Ignorant Master (2026-10-15).
Role in the triad
Anchor: the case for the ignorant master and the equality of intelligences.
Why this book
Strongest modern argument that one can teach what one does not know; its target, the explicator, is Steiner’s Master; its examples (illiterate father, Lord’s Prayer, pupil teaching teacher) are what Williams documents, criminalized, in the same decades.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “There is stultification whenever one intelligence is subordinated to another.” (p. 13) | “There is no one on earth who hasn’t learned something by himself and without a master explicator.” (p. 16) | “Whoever teaches without emancipating stultifies.” (p. 18) | “To teach what one doesn’t know is simply to ask questions about what one doesn’t know.” (p. 30) | “Universal teaching is the poor’s method. But it isn’t a method of the poor.” (p. 106) | “It’s the disciple that makes the master.” (p. 19) | Excerpt pp. 29–30 (Meno’s slave)
Themes
equality of intelligence · explication · ignorant master · Jacotot · Meno · stultification · Télémaque · universal teaching