This article interprets the success of Jacques Rancière’s writings in the field of political theory by working through the notions of theoretical voice and charismatic hold. By drawing on Jean-Luc Évard’s problematization of charisma as the effect of a translation of a beyond into an already-there, it becomes possible to read Rancière’s interventions as captivating redescriptions of the equality of intelligences. The formulation of equality as a starting point rather than as a political endpoint is also sensible in the spoken voice of Rancière, and it is this seductive conceptual translation that his English-speaking translators seek to render in their language.