Writing Revolution: France, Haiti, 1848 Europe, and the Paris Commune

Catalog description

This seminar explores the writing of revolutionary moments, when the course of history is interrupted and announces a new path, one that can be realized, betrayed, or compromised. What are the strategies for capturing, condensing, and making legible events that have an often unrecognized pre-history, an explosive moment, and various aftermaths? How do literary and theoretical strategies differ? After a quick look at the Peasants War and its theorizations by Bloch, Engels, and the Wu Ming collective, the course focuses on the long nineteenth century in Europe (including its colonies) and its series of revolutionary convulsions: the French Revolution (Buechner, Weiss, Kant, Hegel, Burke, Tocqueville), the Haitian Revolution (Kleist, CLR James, Hegel, Buck-Morss); the weavers uprising of 1844 (Hauptmann, Heine, Kollwitz); the 1848 revolutions (Marx, Flaubert, Tocqueville), and the Paris Commune of 1871 (Kristin Ross).