Jacques Rancière (2001) 'Ten Theses on Politics', Theory & Event 5:3, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v005/5.3ranciere.html

'Politics is not the exercise of power. Politics ought to be defined in its own terms, as a mode of acting put into practice by a specific kind of subject and deriving from a particular form of reason. It is the political relationship that allows one to think the possibility of a political subject(ivity) [le sujet politique], not the other way around.'

The return of the political in Rancière's theses, makes reference to Arendt and Aristotle to identify the common good as opposed to the sad reality of liberal participatory democracy. He defines politics as bound to relations but not as the relation between subjects but as the the contradictory relation through which the subject is defined. According to Aristotle, the subject (politès) is defined by 'part-taking' (metexis) in a form of action (archein - ruling) and in the undergoing that corresponds to this doing (archesthai - being ruled) (2001). The origin of the political lies in the properties of its subjects and in how they come together, how they 'part-take', or in other words how they participate in contradictory forms of action. 'Politics is a paradoxical form of action' according to Rancière, and hence can be defined in the contradictions at the heart of action - between acting and being acted upon. 

For Rancière, the classical opposition of 'poiesis' and 'praxis' do not help explain action. In saying this, he is making reference to Arendt's _The Human Condition_ in which praxis takes on the power to act (and speak) corresponding to the principles of freedom and good politics. The problem is that this presupposes a need to act rather than be acted upon, that leads Rancière to conclude that the opposition cannot be resolved and the logic need to be ruptured to identify politics. It is the very 'axioms of democracy' (of ruling and being ruled) that require rupture to open up discussion of the constitution of the subject and its relations (2001).