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Society for French Historical Studies

Furet's RevolutionAuthor(s): Claude Langlois and Timothy TacketSource: French Historical Studies, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 766-776Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/286319 .Accessed: 03/06/2011 11:13

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FRANCQIS FURET'S INTERPRETATIONOF THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONFuret's Revolution

Claude LangloisThe firm of Furet and Co. has had much in its favor: publicity, thebacking of the media, large scale publications. It has attractedrhapsodic praise and pamphlet attacks, but more rarely analysis.Furet himself has been at the task for years: La Revolution franqaisewith Denis Richet in 1965;1the controversy over the "RevolutionaryCatechism" in 1970-71;2 Penser la Revolution franqaise in 1978;3Furet, Marx, and Quinet in 1986;4 he Dictionnaire critique de la Revo-lution franqaise,5La Revolution: De Turgot aJules Ferry, 1770-1880,6and the Orateurs de la Revolution franqaise,7all in 1988-89. But thissimple enumeration calls for several commentaries.Without suggesting that there are as many "Furets" as there arebooks-or even articles-it is clear that in twenty-five years theauthor's perspectives have evolved. The contrary, in fact, would have

1 In 2 vols. (Paris, 1965-66).2 "Le Cat&hisme revolutionnaire." Annales. E.S.C. 26 (1971): 255-89.3 (Paris, 1978), in English as Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. Elborg Forster(Cambridge, 1981).4 Francois Furet, Marx et la Revolution franfaise (Paris, 1986), in English as Marx and theFrench Revolution, trans. Deborah Kan Furet (Chicago, 1988);and La Gauche et la Revolutionfranfaise au milieu du XIXe sikle: Edgar Quinet et la question du jacobinisme (1865-1870)(Paris, 1986).5 (Paris, 1988), in English as A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, trans. ArthurGoldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 1989).6 (Paris, 1988).7 (Paris, 1989).Claude Langlois is professor of history at the University of Rouen. He is the author of LeDiocese de Vannes, 1800 a 1830 (Paris, 1974), Le Catholicisme au feminin (Paris, 1984), and LaCaricature contre-revolutionnaire (Paris, 1988). He has also published over sixty articles andchapters in collective works and is general editor of the multivolume Atlas de la Revolutionfran aise. He is presently continuing his research on the iconography of the French Revolution. AFrench version of this article appeared under the title "FrancoisFuret: L'Atelier de la Revolution, "Esprit, no. 162 (June 1990), 12-21.

French Historical Studies, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Fall 1990)Copyright ? 1990 by the Society for French Historical Studies

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FURET'S REVOLUTION 767

been surprising, and to reproach him for this would be grossly unfair.Yet the three most recent publications, despite their differences informat, present a real unity of tone, the full expression of a conceptiondeveloped to its complete maturity.Furet, moreover, is rarely alone. He coauthored La Revolutionwith Richet, he coedited the Critical Dictionary with Mona Ozouf, hecointroduced Les Orateurs with Ran Halevi. For each project, heknows how to surround himself with efficient and competent col-laborators. Call it a school, a network, a galaxy. In any case, "KingFuret" is not a solitary.In 1971he confronted Albert Soboul and Claude Mazauric, the his-torians of the Marxist "vulgate." In 1989 he was placed in oppositionto Michel Vovelle, despite the denials-amused or perhaps irritated-of the latter, who maintains that "we arenot fighting in the same cate-gory." Antagonisms are visible nevertheless: ideological, institutional(the Sorbonne versus the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, and more specifi-cally, the Institut d'histoire de la Revolution versus the Institut Ray-mond Aron) and historiographical (cultural history versus philo-sophical history). To underline the obvious, Vovelle chose during theBicentennial events to speak about the Revolution, Furet to write aboutit. Vovelle made himself the traveling representative at colloquiathroughout the world, Furet produced a series of books, carefully med-itated. But the two also have a point in common. Neither is a specialistof the Revolution in the manner of their predecessors, who, from Al-phonse Aulard to Soboul, restricted themselves almost exclusively tothis subject. Both are historians of the iongue duree: Furet has slowlyshifted, like others of his generation, from social to cultural history(the history of the book, the history of education); Vovelle first madehis reputation, like Philippe Aries, as a historian of death.Furet's approach might best be discovered, to begin with, in theCritical Dictionary. The title and the format are at once commonplaceand original. Commonplace, because each of the major contemporaryspecialists of the French Revolution-Soboul, Vovelle, Tulard, as wellas Furet-has published his "own" dictionary, and none took the riskof writing a real history of the Revolution that would take into accountthe forty years of new research since Georges Lefebvre wrote his Revo-lution franqaise,8the standard referencework on the subject. It is diffi-8 (Paris, 1951), in English as The French Revolution, 2 vols., trans. Elizabeth Moss Evanson,John Hall Stewart, James Friguglietti (New York, 1962-64). Albert Soboul and others, eds., Dic-tionnaire historique de la Revolution franfaise (Paris, 1989), Michel Vovelle, ed., L'Etat de laFrance pendant la Revolution, 1789-1799 (Paris, 1988);and Jean Tulard, Jean-Francois Fayard,and Alfred Fierro, eds., Histoire et dictionnaire de la Revolution franfaise, 1789-1799 (Paris,1987).

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768 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

cult to know whether this represents a lack of interest on the part of theauthors or the editors or the difficulty of organizing a body of knowl-edge that has been both permanently defined and substantiallyrenewed.But the Furet-Ozouf also differs from other works of this kind:first, through the consistency of tone created by the active role of thecoeditors and by the association of many of the collaborators with thesame Institute (Raymond Aron); second, by the refusal to disperse the"Dictionary" but rather to include only about a hundred entries, eachone a veritable essay. Five chapters are included: events, actors, crea-tions, ideas, and historians. Given the ferocious selection process, eachreader can make a list of missing items, or more subtly, of elements thatremain at the periphery. Absent, for example, are the social actors:there is no nobility (only an aristocracy), no clergy, no bourgeoisie, nopeasants, no artisans, not to mention no women. They have not beenforgotten, but deliberately left out. Absent, as well, are long-term his-tory and history from below, a history of constraints: the weight ofnumbers, the state of the roads, the production of grain. In the desire tobreak with Marx or with a certain Marxist historiography-thecables have been cut off from any form of determinism. Missing too, arethe arts and sciences. Furet's Revolution has no use of David or of con-temporary caricature, or scientists or of artists. They would onlyclutter it, lead it astray.Present, but only in a marginal fashion, are economic and finan-cial history. The entries on taxes, assignats, and nationalized land havebeen assigned to specialists and are highly competent. But they areconsidered largely "technical" and are little integrated into thewhole-as revealed by the small number of cross-references that followthese articles. Revolutionary geography is also largely marginalized:there is no mention of the "Atlantic revolution" and hardly any of thegrande nation. Even the popular depiction of the Revolution, that ofthe images of Epinal, has been marginalized: events, blind and scarcelycontrollable violence, the revolutionary journees, the daily life ofcommon men and women, are alluded to only in passing. The fasci-nating "Introduction" by Furet and Halevi, which serves as a prefaceto the Orateurs, further underscores this choice: 17June is mentioned,but neither 14 July nor the Great Fear; the night of 4 August and theDeclaration of the Rights of Man (26 August), but not the OctoberDays. To be sure, the preface is designed to introduce the Constituentdeputies and thus the Assembly itself. Yet the priorities are clear. Oneonly has to read the essay: 1789,with the Declarations of the Rights of

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Man and the sovereignty of the people, marks the birth of democracyand the break with the Old Regime, the essential events which deter-mine "both the philosophical and the political nature of the Revolu-tion." This is the essential to which Furet and his team of collaboratorswish to confine themselves and on which they ask to be judged.Politics and philosophy say it all. As for politics, once the prin-cipal actors have been presented, indispensable for understanding theplay (Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette; La Fayette and Mirabeau;Danton, Marat, and Robespierre; and ultimately, Carnot, Babeuf, andBonaparte), once a few privileged events have been evoked (the GreatFear, the night of 4 August, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, theFederation, Varennes, the king's trial), the approach consists in identi-fying the new localization of power, sources of an immediate break(Estates General) or, and above all, of a future break (revolutionaryassemblies, clubs and popular societies, Paris Commune, Committeeof Public Safety, revolutionary government), in checking off the formsof opposition aroused by the Revolution (emigres, federalism, Vendee,chouannerie), in following the partisan groupings that follow andoppose one another (Monarchiens, Feuillants, Girondins, Montag-nards, Enrages, Hebertists, and Thermidorians), in noting the emble-matic creations of 1789 (Rights of Man, constitution, departement) andof the Year II (De-christianization, revolutionary religion, revolu-tionary calendar, Maximum, vandalism, Terror), and, finally, inmaking the new constellations of the revolutionary and democraticheavens shine in all their glory (regeneration, liberty, equality, frater-nity, public spirit, democracy, republic, sovereignty, revolution).This final series of entries brings us to the very frontier betweenhistory and philosophy. Indeed, in the mixed genre of philosophicalhistory, philosophy triumphs in a parade of great men whose nameswill scarcely surprise the reader: an altogether "classical" choice,imposed in the name of a common tradition or of a well-temperedFuretism. Who could take exception to the Enlightenment trio (Mon-tesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire-plus the physiocrats) or to the trio ofGerman philosophers (Fichte, Hegel, Kant)? Who could exclude theduet of counterrevolutionaries (Burkeand Maistre) or of liberals (Con-stant and Stad)? Who could dare come to grips with the Revolution inthe nineteenth century without the keen swords of the Three Muske-teers, Tocqueville, Michelet, and Marx-plus that of Quinet (perhapsthe new d'Artagnan)? In this sense, the rare novelties in the CriticalDictionary are all the more interesting. By comparison with Furet'sprevious writings, a balance is restored for nineteenth-century histo-

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rians in the direction of the Left (with the inclusion of Buchez-littleappreciated however-Louis Blanc, and Jaures) and to the disadvan-tage of the Center (only Guizot) and the Right (where Taine replaces aCochin deemed too controversial). Largely shunted are the universityhistorians, lumped together in a single article. (Whatever the CriticalDictionary dislikes or choses to slight is thrown together pell-mell:twentieth-century historians, revolutionary journees, European coun-tries.) Finally, several revolutionary actors are reinstated, actors whowere defeated at the time but who had the merit of vigorously "inter-preting" a Revolution that escaped them or even turned on them:Necker and Sieyes, rapidly pushed aside in the drama; Barnave andCondorcet, who did not survive the upheaval.From these indications one can already perceive the kind ofhistory presented. Let us avoid anachronisms. The hour of the "Revo-lutionary catechism" has passed. This critical history is not a history"against -even Soboul, who probably receives more bibliographiccitations than anyone, is no longer the target-but a history "without."Twenty years of revolutionary research by French and non-Frenchalike could be suppressed, and the core of the Furet-Ozouf Critical Dic-tionary would suffer very little. It is a history without Reinhard-forgotten in fact by everyone-to whom we owe nevertheless therenewal of demographic, military, and religious history. It is a historywithout Richard Cobb, this Shakespeare of the profession for whomthe Revolution was ultimately only "sound and fury," who knew sowell how to inspire his students with the imperious necessity ofarchival research. It is a history without Lefebvre: the peasant Revolu-tion, the Revolution from below, might never have taken place. (Onlythe sans-culottes manage to hold their own as full-time actors in revo-lutionary Paris.) It is a history which also, of course, takesexception toAlbert Mathiez, and which returns in some respects to Aulard andErnest Lavisse.It is only too easy to be critical of the Critical Dictionary. It is moredifficult to understand why it is so pleasurable to read:perhaps becauseof its full and incisive, yet subtle prose; or because of the luminositywhich so frequently fills the pages, the virtuosity, sustained but neverexaggerated; or because of the union of so many talents, the felicity ofstyle, the skill of exposition, the intelligence of the development. Butall this is insufficient to explain the favorable outcome, indeed thesuccess of the enterprise. Furet and Ozouf restore the language of theactors and, at the same time, cut through the successive layers of thehistorical sediment. They attempt to discover the original score of a

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misrepresented work, to render the original polyphony of the greatperformers on the revolutionary stage, all the while knowing that his-tory can only be seized through writings which invariably superim-pose and entangle themselves with one another.They openly affirm the primacy of the Hegelian and Marxianreadings, and, even more, of the Tocquevillian and Aronian readingsof history. Two hundred yearsafter the fact, in the context of the Bicen-tennial, they have composed the sole veritable "Hymn to Reason" thatanyone has dared to produce. Clearly, for them, Descartesremains aliveand well in France; clearly, for them, there is no history that is notgrasped by the intellect. Everything is in ideas and ideas first of all: theOld Regime, the aristocracy, the counterrevolution, feudalism, naturalfrontiers, Jacobinism, and ultimately the Revolution itself. In such anaffirmation, there is a great deal of conviction, a measure of provoca-tion, and the tiniest bit of oversimplification. The ideas in question arecontinuously confronted with their political embodiments: ideaswhich are at once myths, fictions, and palpable founding principals,ideas which at one and the same time inculcate change (Rights of Man,popular sovereignty) and reconstruct a past which is being abolished(Old Regime, feudalism). To be sure, much could be said on this score.We need only recall that Pierre Goubert began his classic work on theOld Regime9 with the very definition given to it by the revolution-aries, both Constituents and "peasants."We might wonder, nevertheless, whether Furet and Ozouf, in theirpedagogical efforts to reconstitute an intelligent and intelligible Revo-lution, as meditated and remeditated by the historian-actors of thenineteenth century, are not transforming their history into a historio-graphical ideal-type. The very starknessof the contrasts of this concep-tion might suggest the need for another very different pole ofinterpretation: a history which would find its specificity not in themarriage of politics and philosophy, but of politics and anthropology;a history which would stress rituals, new and old, practices, symbolicrepresentations, the language of gestures, of clothing, of the humanbody and of social bodies; a history which would sacrifice less to thearistocracy of ideas and would takegreateraccount of the democracy ofthe common document. In fact, such a history has already beeninitiated but remains dispersed in as many histories as the authors whohave glimpsed its possibility: but notably in the book by Mona Ozouf,

9 L'Ancien Regime (Paris, 1969).

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who led the way some years ago in studies of revolutionary festivals,studies which are still worth reading or rereading today.'0The second installment in Furet's recent work is La Revolution:De Turgot aJules Ferry.The title itself is intended to be provocative: acentury of Revolution-where five years are usually sufficient-divided into two unequal periods: "The French Revolution (1770-1815)" and "Ending the Revolution (1815-80)." The first of the twopromotes the inclusion of the Napoleonic experience in the cycle of1789, thus reviving an old debate, but with solid argumentation. Thesecond section endorses the obvious-the permanence of the revolu-

tionary tradition from 1830 to 1871-and suggests an explanatoryprinciple: the centralized state, as it emerged from the revolutionaryand Napoleonic period, remained after 1815 a solid instrument ofpower, desired and untouchable. But "in investing the state with uni-versal suffrage, in the name of the equality of all citizens, the republi-cans of 1870 succeeded in permanently establishing the law on the basisof popular sovereignty. This is precisely what the men of 1789 hadsought to do."" The problem is to understand why the Third Republicalone was able to carry off the prize and to announce that theRevolution-and thus, already, its history-was over.Furet travels alone this time, and for a long and complicatedjourney. He aims at a much broader public and adapts himself accord-ingly: an abundant gallery of outstanding portraits-including, mostnotably, Louis XVI, Bonaparte, Thiers, Gambetta-and a presenta-tion in strict chronological order of the succeeding regimes. The his-torical approach, analyzed above, remains the same: a self-containedpolitical history, but one which, especially for the period after 1848,requires that full-fledged parts be given both to a vigorous Catholi-cism, moving in opposition to its age and, especially, to the increas-ingly differentiated social classes, particularly the bourgeoisie.The illumination brought to bear on events comes constantlyfrom above: from contemporary historians of the Revolution and po-litical analysts, above all. Thus, for example, when Furet treats thecountry's reaction to the inertia of the Guizot regime between 1840 and1848,he explains that "rather than attempting to describe in an inevit-ably vague manner society's response to the last July government, Ihave chosen to illustrate it through the reactions of three intellectualsof the period, each of whom played, moreover, an important political

10 Mona Ozouf, La Fete revolutionnaire, 1789-1799 (Paris, 1976),in English as Festivals andthe French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, 1988).11La Revolution: De Turgot a Jules Ferry, 9.

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role."'2 And whom does he choose but Tocqueville, Michelet, andLouis Blanc, three historians of the Revolution. So too, in order tomeasure the impact of the June days in France, he asks the views of"two of the greatest thinkers of the period, both of whom wrote first-hand, or nearly first-hand, commentaries on events: Marx and Toc-queville. 13Furet excels in putting events in perspective, in discerning influ-ences, in locating breaking points. He sometimes gives the impressionof being more at ease with short-term trends than with the iongueduree. It is not hard to see the strong point of such a history: the abilityto reveal-with the help of his actor-commentators of quality-thedeployment of revolutionary activity from 1789 through its exhaustionunder the Republic. But the limits are also apparent: a presentationwhich favors the lucid understanding of a few privileged witnesses,which bends under the tyrannyof high politics, which accepts the mostvisible rhythms of events. Thus, the paradox that while the conquest ofthe state is at the center of Furet's scenario, no effort is made to viewthat state through the eyes of its diverse representatives or to measure itsreal hold on the population, on its police, its bureaucrats, its budget,its taxes, its army, its judges, its prisons, and so on.Furet's Revolution presents two different faces. For the largerpublic, it conveys a clear message. Political modernity is rooted in theFrench Revolution, whose essential values emerged intact from theturmoil of the Terror, and, thanks to the maieutics of the nineteenth-century historians, they still form the basis of France's democracy.From this point of view, Furet's accomplishment is unique in itsbreadth, in its vigor, in its persuasive strength. It is to be hoped that theCritical Dictionary will soon appear in a paperback edition, accessibleto the less wealthy. For whoever takes the trouble of following in suc-cession the three different paths which Furet has traced, it is evidentthat the coherence of the overall project is accompanied by a clear edi-torial diversity. With its fragmented structure and its polyphony oftalented writers, the Critical Dictionary is particularly successful inuniting a care for proof with the critique of several layers of historio-graphy. The Orateurs de la Revolution franqaisemarks out the prin-cipal material used in the Furetist construction, the speeches pro-nounced by the revolutionaries within the diverse assemblies. Thus,between ideas and revolutionary practice, we find the mediation of theword. La Revolution: De Turgot aJules Ferry obeys two other impera-

12 Ibid., 361.13 Ibid., 402.

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tives: to assess the longer-term development of the Revolution, andalso to test the possibility of using the intellectual analysis developedfor the revolutionary period to examine the less tumultuous field ofnineteenth-century history. Based on their specific objectives andinterests, different individuals will take the path which they prefer. Afull knowledge of Furet's French Revolution, however, requires one tofollow the complete itinerary.Yet Furet's recent corpus is addressednot only to the larger public,but also-and perhaps above all-to professional historians. Indeed,the work of 1988-89 will provoke them far more than the "Revolu-tionary catechism." In launching his noisy polemical attack againstSoboul and Mazauric in 1970, Furet's objective was to pull the historyof the Revolution back into line with other history, to bring to an end aregime of special treatment, to urge that the Marxist "catechism" nolonger be taught at school. In sum, scarcely a century afterJules Ferry,he sought to ensure the laicization of history, not this time as opposedto Catholicism but as opposed to Marxism.By 1989 Furet's position was reversed, and he found himself coun-tering and perhaps exasperating the university world. The discourseon method of 1978 had been clear, but the kind of history that could beraised on this foundation was not yet evident. In its present version,Furet's French Revolution can engender many different reactions. Iwill leave it to others to pursue these old battles or to open new fronts,but I would like to terminate this presentation with a few additionalobservations. From Tocqueville to Cochin, Furet has continuouslysought interpreters for his revolutionary theater. But at the same time,he has refused to allow the Revolution to be truly over and delivered upto the professional historians. He gives the impression of having takenaway with one hand what he had given with the other. He challenged ahistoriographical imperialism and sought to remove the special privi-leges given to revolutionary history, but not to the point of turning itover to the university historians. For a time, one might have thoughtthis was because the latter were deemed neo-Jacobin and Marxist, butnow it is clear that the problem goes deeper. In not going beyond Taineand Jaures in his choice of individual models, is Furetnot challengingthe fundamental principles of the historiographical approach defini-tively established with the era of critical "scientific" history, a historycharacterized by the fragmentation of objectives, the multiplication ofhypotheses, the tyranny of the archives? In order to remain in the goodcompany of those who wish to interpret history as a totality, must weforego all the gains and achievements of historical "positivism"?

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But such a diagnosis, toward which Furet himself seems to pushus, overlooks one detail. Both Furetand his principal collaborators arethemselves historians by profession. Furet'schallenge is thus revealingof a crisis internal to history itself. To understand that crisis better,weonly need recall a few well-known facts. For some fifteen years now,historical knowledge has been exploded, in its objects, in its methods,in its writing. 14The realization of this fact was originally perceived as ahealthy sign. But historians have been reluctant to assess its full conse-quences. The Balkanization of history according to periods anddomains has led to explanations through circular reasoning, throughclosed circuits of causality, while the accumulation of heterogeneousknowledge seems to have made the understanding of specific historicalperiods all the more opaque. It would be easy to make such a demon-stration for the Revolution. The multiplication of fragmentaryresearch about the army or iron production or notables does not initself help us to progress toward an improved explanation. On theother hand, history is a discipline as ambitious as it is fragile. It maywell be proud of its appetite and glory in the extension of its territory.Yet by the same token it is constantly in search of external modelswhich can extract it from its deep empiricism.By appealing to political philosophy-in fact, to the philosophersand historians of an extended nineteenth century-Furet proposes aremedy for these difficulties. He establishes as a law the autonomycommonly given to politics as an independent object of research; andhe finds a means of presenting the Revolution as an understandablewhole. But he continually runs up against the same obstacle: the dom-inant place given to "scientific" or "university" historiography. Andhere, putting aside polemics, we arrive at the essential problem. Mustwe accept a complete incompatibility between a metahistory possessedof a meaning and a history pulverized into scientifically determinedbut insignificant scholarship. But on what basis can such a partitionbe established? Should a special status be granted to revolutionaryhistory because it serves as the foundation of the Republican memory?But after having previously denounced one catechism, does this notentail the promotion of a new one? Furet's French Revolution bringsfully into the open the difficulty-if not the impossibility-of pur-suing two different operations from the same base: the critical selectionof the Critical Dictionary and the historical synthesis of the "century-long revolution." The first is successful insofar as this incomparable14 See Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora, Faire l'histoire, 3 vols. (Paris, 1974).

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prism allows us to recover today a Revolution mixed with politicalpraxis and philosophical reflections. The second remains much moreproblematic, because it has been constructed independently of theaccumulation of historical scholarship which would normally serve asits foundation.The limited use made of that scholarship-not through a lack ofappreciation, but through a refusal to recognize its pertinence-andthe neglect of numerous new discoveries make Furet's synthesis frag-ile on a number of points. I would confine myself here to two exam-ples taken from the nineteenth century. Philippe Vigier and MauriceAgulhon have demonstrated the original manner in which democracywas constructed in the Alps and in Provence under the SecondRepublic.'5 Based on their work, one could conclude that 1848 wasaltogether as new and original as 1789. The appearance of universalsuffrage created a new kind of foundation for popular power to thedisadvantage of a revolutionary Paris. But in his emphasis on conti-nuity, Furet, in my opinion, underestimates this radical transforma-tion. As a second example, Eugen Weber has shown to what extent thepolitical and cultural unification of France occurred relatively late,because peasants never fully became Frenchmen until the periodbetween 1880 and 1914.16To be sure, this thesis has been disputed.Some have argued that Weber's descriptions only apply to the mostarchaic regions, not to the totality of the French territory. Yet theoverall significance of his inquiry remains. Clearly, any explanation ofthe political stability finally achieved by the Third Republic must takeinto account the growing homogeneity of the village populations. Itwas the intuition of this transformation which allowed Gambetta toconstruct a political compromise, defining the Senate as the "conseildes communes de France." It is curious that Furet, the historian of thegrowth of literacy, was unable to bring home this point to Furet, thehistorian of the "long Revolution."But political history, as it is conceived by Furet, is entirely self-sufficient. It is to be understood independently of the realities of theFrance of the 1880s,without any referenceto the concrete embodimentsof state power, without focusing attention, one might also add, on thesymbolic expressions-fictions, symbols, caricatures, and so onwhich made possible the very representation of power.

TRANSLATION TIMOTHY TACKET15Philippe Vigier, La Seconde Republique dans la region alpine, 2 vols. (Paris, 1963);Mau-rice Agulhon, La Republique au village (Paris, 1970).16 Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford, 1976).

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