Power and the French Revolution: Toward a Sociology of Sovereignty

Abstract

Abstract:In what sense was the French Revolution exceptional -a moment of potential liberation both unique and uncertain? "Exceptionality" has a specific meaning in political philosophy, and, using this meaning as a departure point, this paper develops a specifically sociological typology of states of exception -enunciative, reciprocal, and structural -grounded in a Hegelian sociology of power. The schema is useful for parsing and interpreting several of Robespierre's most important speeches during the Revolution. This analysis leads to retheorization of modernity in the French Revolution, with specific attention to the interpretation, in Paris, of the revolution in Saint Domingue.Keywords: state of exception; Robespierre; Haitian revolution; sociology of revolutions; G. W. F. He gel DOI: 10.14712/23363525.2018.38 On May 26, 1794, Maximilien Robespierre, president of the National Convention, gave the speech, "On the Enemies of the Nation. " It is an articulation of the utility and necessity of violence to defend the republic under siege inside (civil war) and outside (the international coalition against revolutionary France), and it is an "either you are with us or against us" speech. In it, Robespierre argues that assassination is the remaining tool of the counterrevolutionaries. He then works the binaries: on the one hand, he explains, there is "the mass of citizens, pure, simple, thirsting for justice and friends of liberty, " and, on the other, "a mass of the ambitious and intriguers […] who abuse the learning that the advantages of the ancien régime gave them in order to fool public opinion. " The implication is that steel must be met with steel in defense of the republic, and that revolutionary sacrifice is glory in posterity: "To make war on crime is the path to the tomb and to immorality; to favor crime is the path to the throne and the scaffold" [Robespierre 2004[Robespierre (1794The speech is similar in rhetorical structure to his more famous speeches, including the one that advocated the execution of the King. However, in the middle of this particular speech, Robespierre pauses briefly for a reflection that is out of the character with the rest of the speech: "The moment in which we find ourselves is favorable, but it is perhaps unique. In the state of equilibrium in which things are it is easy to consolidate liberty, and it is easy to lose it. " He then quickly returns to his invective. But for a few spoken lines, he meditates on the meaning of what is taking place as an event in the history of the world, and as a social crisis uncertain in its direction. Perhaps, one even senses that he finds the event somewhat opaque to those whose decisions would determine it. USA. E-mail: iar2c@virginia.edu. H I S T O R I C K Á S O C I O L O G I E 1/2018In what sense was the French Revolution exceptional [Jourdan 2011] -a moment of potential liberation both unique and uncertain? There are many everyday, philosophical and historical meanings of the term "exception. " But the meaning which is the most reveali...