Reconfiguring the topography of experience

elements of Jacques Rancière's method of equality in a scene staged by Pedro Costa

Abstract

The aim of this text is to gather some main elements of the method of equality in Jacques Rancière, taking as key the creation of a scene made from the dialogue with a character of the filmmaker Pedro Costa. By showing the political appearance of the Cape Verdean migrant Ventura, Rancière makes explicit his concern with a method that allows the anti-hierarchical coexistence of temporalities, spatialities and corporeities. Rancière's method is similar to that of Pedro Costa when he elaborates a writing that works, on a rough surface, unusual combinations between materialities and landscapes, exposing the division and inequalities that fracture the common. We argue that the montage of a scene interferes with our experience of apprehending the subjects and their ways of appearing in the world, as it redefines “the topography of the perceptible, the thinkable and the possible” (RANCIÈRE, 2020, p.830).