Review of 'In defence of the terror' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Bottom line this is a brief dense text... translated from French which makes an argument about a particular historical interpretation which for me was insightful. I can't give it 5 stars since it chose a style of language and argument that was more difficult to read than it had to be. Also it gave Slavoj Zizek far too many pages to run on in it's intro... I love Slavoj... His intro was just too rhetorically divergent here.
More thoughts below:
So the consensus of many histories of the French Revolutionary period has been that "The Reign of Terror" was not just scary or bad, but not justifiable. This text points to the realities faced by the representatives of the people of France in their desperate attempts to maintain some semblance of order amongst a population so long oppressed and now free. The argument being that state sponsored terror would be …
Bottom line this is a brief dense text... translated from French which makes an argument about a particular historical interpretation which for me was insightful. I can't give it 5 stars since it chose a style of language and argument that was more difficult to read than it had to be. Also it gave Slavoj Zizek far too many pages to run on in it's intro... I love Slavoj... His intro was just too rhetorically divergent here.
More thoughts below:
So the consensus of many histories of the French Revolutionary period has been that "The Reign of Terror" was not just scary or bad, but not justifiable. This text points to the realities faced by the representatives of the people of France in their desperate attempts to maintain some semblance of order amongst a population so long oppressed and now free. The argument being that state sponsored terror would be easier to control than insurrection. As Danton said ‘let us be terrible in order to stop the people from being so’.
It seems to me the real innovation of the revolution was giving political voice to the voiceless, but the Revolution did "... not wish to make poverty disappear, to exclude it from the community, but on the contrary to give it a place that makes insensitivity towards it impossible." By giving the poverty stricken and oppressed a place at the table meant inviting those seeking revenge into the government.
The author then turns to recent attempts to compare the French Revolutionary "terrorists" to those "terrorists" who planned and carried out 9/11. It's worth the read just to get this perspective.