This article is part of a broader effort recently undertaken by educational theorists to verify the implications of Jacques Ranciere's work for the field of educational studies. Rather than attempting to fashion productive linkages between Ranciere and other critical pedagogues, to render a "new logic of emancipation," or explore the political efficacy of Ranciere's "dissensus" for considering educational justice movements, this article explores the intersection of "intellectual emancipation" and "democratic politics" in Ranciere's thought in order to think experimentally about citizenship and citizenship education. The author suggests that there is an unexplored continuity between Ranciere's educational theory of intellectual emancipation and the democratic event that provides an opening for conceptualizing citizenship as a kind of activist "art" or "poetics" of political becoming. Ultimately, the author is interested in what this might mean for questioning the theoretical valences and practices of education for democratic citizenship within neoliberal culture. The author's argument develops as follows. First, he outlines Ranciere's perspectives on aesthetics and democracy, highlighting how the institution of politics as supernumerary event hints toward what Davide Panagia (2009) has referred to as an "improper" form of democratic citizenship. Second, he discusses Ranciere's reading of emancipation within Joseph Jacotot's radical pedagogy in order to understand the role of equality and intellectual agency within educational, social, and democratic processes. In the third section, he brings these elements together through a broader discussion of Ranciere's thought in relation to developments in contemporary citizenship studies. He suggests that intellectual emancipation as the verification of equality through what is common provides the substantive foundation for the democratic event. This enables one to think citizenship as a kind of activist "art" or "poetics" outside the strictures of political liberalism and the law. In the fourth and final section, he brings this formulation into conversation with liberal and critical approaches to citizenship education. By way of conclusion, the author considers a Rancierian art of citizenship within neoliberal culture and argues that while Ranciere's thought resists institutionalization it nonetheless provides insight into critiquing and reimagining dominant assumptions and practices within citizenship education. (Contains 1 note.)