In The Future of the Image, Jacques Ranci re develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, showing how art and politics have always been intrinsically intertwined. Covering a range of art movements, filmmakers such as Godard and Bresson, and thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Adorno, Barthes, Lyotard and Greenberg, Ranci re shows that contemporary theorists of the image are suffering from religious tendencies.
He argues that there is a stark political choice in art: it can either reinforce a radical democracy, or create a new reactionary mysticism. For Ranci re there is never a pure art: the aesthetic revolution must always embrace egalitarian ideals.