Jacques Ranciére, (b.1940, Algiers, Algeria, lives and works in Paris, France) is Professor Emeritus at the Université de Paris VIII, Saint-Denis, France and Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. His numerous publications include The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (1991), and Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (1998), which explores the origins and meaning of politics. More recently, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (2004) and The Aesthetic Unconscious (2009) have approached aesthetics, particularly with respect to contemporary tendencies in art production.