The Intellectual Legacy of the French Revolution: New Historical Perspectives

Dear colleagues,

What is the French Revolution? If this question can still be raised today, it is undoubtedly due to the immense effects this revolution has had on world history. However, it is no longer sufficient to raise this question as if the "French Revolution" refers to a known and stable signified. In fact, recent scholarship has suggested that instead of viewing the French Revolution as a unique event, it should rather be analyzed as a plurality of revolutionary trajectories, sometimes reinforcing and other times in friction with each other. If we abandon the historicist paradigm that considers the Revolution as a stage in the progress of freedom, the Revolution unravels into a multiplicity of geographical and temporal trajectories. The revolution of black slaves in Haiti, the revolution of women, peasants, and sans-culottes... The revolution of primary assemblies and multiple social institutions alternative to the united centralized nation-state. The revolution of common possession as an alternative to private property, and the revolution of guilds as an alternative to an atomized society. In light of these multiple revolutions, the original question should be rephrased. How many revolutions are the French Revolution? Moreover, we should ask: What is a revolution? In this Special Issue, we would like to "provincialize" the French Revolution, not only spatially, looking at it from different geographical perspectives, but also temporally, looking at the intertwining and conflict of different histories and temporalities in the revolutionary processes. If history is always a history of the present, talking about the intellectual legacy of the French Revolution in the 21st century perhaps no longer means to retrace its main road that leads to the formation of the modern nation-state and the rights of man. It may be the right time to rethink other revolutionary trajectories within it, trajectories that can contribute to reimagining the present.  

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• french revolution
• intellectual legacy
• history