The virtues of violence : democracy against disintegration in modern France / Kevin Duong.

9780190058449 (ebook) :

New York : Oxford University Press, 2020.

1 online resource (256 pages).

Access is available to the Yale community.

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on March 31, 2020).

Access restricted by licensing agreement.

This book uncovers an unfamiliar vision of political violence that nonetheless prevailed in modern French thought: that through "redemptive violence" the people would not rend but regenerate society. It homes in on invocations of popular redemptive violence across four historical moments in France specifically: the French Revolution, Algeria's colonization, the Paris Commune, and the eve of the first World War. In each of these cases, the book reveals how French thinkers experienced democratization as social disintegration. Yet, before such danger, they also proclaimed that virtuous violence by the people could repair the social fabric. The path leading from an anarchic multitude to an organized democratic society required, not violence's prohibition, but its virtuous expression by the people.

Oxford scholarship online.

Print version :

Books / Online

English

April 27, 2020

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Specialized.