rancière on the internet

[I interviewed Jacques Rancière a little while ago. The whole thing will be up on ephemera at some point soon, but in the meantime, I thought some of you might like what he has to say about the internet. I know I did. Thanks to Jon Melling for the transcription].

[at this point I asked Rancière about the relationship between the book as he describes it in The Ignorant Schoolmaster and the internet]

'...So with the internet of course the question is different, but I think certainly it makes sense how many people – people in France who call themselves republicans – those people who think that the transmission of knowledge is the only way to liberation. And yet at the same time they are irritated about the internet – because precisely the internet, in a sense, is a refutation of the certifying process. Jacotot describes it: the certifying process is that you must start from this point and go to this point and there is a right way to go from the first point to the last point. We can see the fervour with which people make these incredible statements: “Why, the internet is horrible! There is all this knowledge but people don’t know, they can’t know, they need to be guided!” But the point they are entirely able, is that is very easy to go from one link to another link, it’s very easy even I think for a beginner after one day on the internet to discern what information is reliable or not. It is very easy to go from the most superficial to the most elaborate. So I think it is an interesting case because the internet is a living refutation of a pedagogical model of ‘the good way’.

And this is why there is a very strong polemics against the internet in France, in this milieu of so-called republican intellectuals, very strong accusations against Wikipedia, for instance. “But on Wikipedia, who knows who is writing the information? There is no control etc. etc.” My answer is about Wikipedia is that on Wikipedia you can see the information, but the people are asked to verify it. Of course this never happens in a normal encyclopaedia, in a normal dictionary or encyclopaedia, so the people occupy a position of authority. So I think what we can see on the internet is an erasing of the hierarchical model, of the person who has the authority. It’s obvious to all people that if you are doing research on the internet it’s very easy to come very quickly to forms of knowledge which are very serious knowledge, and verified and so on. But the idea that you can get to this so quickly is intolerable for the supposed elite of the ‘learned’ people.'