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Ideology Or Mentalilés?: Religion, Revisionism and the French Revolution Ideology or Mentalilés?: Religion, Revisionism and the French Revolution by Robert Gareth Penner A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Religion Department of Religion University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba (c) August,2005 0-494-08935-0 Líbrary and Bibliothèque et l*l Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellinqton Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Otta'wa ON K1Ã0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre Éférence /SA/Vi Ourfile Notre retérence /S8N: NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclus¡ve exclusive license allofuing Library permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publÍsh, archive, preserye, conserve, sauvegarderi conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l'lnternet, prêter, telecommunication or on the lnternet distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commerc¡al or non- sur support microforme, papier, électronique commercial purposes, in microform, eUou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protège cette thèse. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement may be pr¡nted or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. ln compliance with the Canadian Conformément à fa loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privée, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont été enlevés de cette thèse. Whiie these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaíres in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. l*l Canada THE TINIVERSITY OF MANITOBA FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES ItJr*** COPYRIGIIT PERMISSION IdeologyorMentalitës?:Religion'RevisionismandtheFrenchRevolution BY Robert Gareth Penner university of Faculty of Graduate studies of The A Thesis/practicum submitted to the Manitobainpartialfulfitlmentoftherequirementofthedegree of Master of Arts Robert Gareth Penner @ 2005 lend or sell copies of of t-ry university of Manitoba to permission has been granted tothe and to lend or sell lilSty of Canada to this thesis the National Liniaîy -ittotU- thesis/practicum' this thesis/practicum,-to ro". to publish an absrract of this of the m_, to úniversity Mi.;;;ü; copies "oä of the copyright has been made available by authority reproduction or copy oJ this thesjs and copied This research' *"t ooty Ut reproduced the purpoJe of private.s*¿V owner' owner solely for ""¿ at'thorizaiion1* from the copvright ov *ith;;i,;, *ti'tt" as perm*te¿ ""IpîrüïiùrÅ-;, Abstract In the 1980's and 1990's Revisionist scholars repudiated the social interpretation of the French Revolution on the grounds that its origin and content were ideological rather than historical. The Revisionist argument relied on concepts borrowed from the French Annales school to establish a set of relations between history, religion and ideology in such a way as to provide for both an altemative to the social interpretation of the Revolution and a vigorous anti-Marxist polemic. At the heart of the Revisionist critique of Marxism was a definition of ideology as a pseudo-religion that imposed severe limitations on the study of religion and the Revolution. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Johannes V/olfart in particular for inspiration, guidance and near endless patience. Additional thanks are also due Dr. Dawne McCance and Dr. Henry Heller for their advice and criticism. Finally thank you to Nicole for helping see me through to the end of this. Table Of Contents Abstract.... .................i Introduction................ ................1 Chapter One: Religion and the French Revolution ........9 Mona Ozouf: Religion and Revolution............. .................10 Timothy Tackett: Religion and Counter-revolution................ .............I7 Suzanne Desan: Reclaiming the Sacred ...........24 Dale Van Kley: Religious Origins of the French Revolution ..............30 Conclusion ...................35 Chapter Two: The Historiography of the French Revolution ........40 George Rudé......... .......45 Alfred Cobban..... .........50 William Doy1e........ ......53 Conclusion ...................56 Chapter Three: High Revisionist Historiography.............. ............58 Gary Kates ....................59 SaraMaza. ....................69 Suzanne Desan........ .....72 Vivian Gruder....... .......74 Conclusion ...................77 Chapter Four: Alternatives to High Revisionism .........78 Claude Langlois.... .......78 Michel Vovelle..... ........92 Chapter Five: The Annales and Marxisrn............... .....86 Peter Burke: Intellectual revolution................ ...................89 François Dosse: Interdisciplinary Warfare................ .........92 Traian Stoianovich: A New Paradigm... ..........94 The Annales and Marxism............ ...................97 Chapter Six: The Annales versus Marxism... .............103 t6 lll lv Introduction In 1989 François Furet and his Revisionist colleagues declared the French Revolution finally over. Two hundred years after it began, the Revisionists argued that the French Revolution had never really been a revolution at all, at least not in the way it had previously been imagined. For the Revisionists the socioeconomic rupture described by both the revolutionaries themselves, and the Marxist historians who followed them, was a historiographic construction that hid the actual continuity of French social and economic history.r In place of the traditional or "orthodox" social interpretation of the Revolution the Revisionists constructed a history of the Revolution as a political and cultural phenomenon. The Revisionist altemative to the social interpretation contributed to an effervescence of political and cultural histories of the French Revolution - and a concurrent backlash against social and economic accounts of it. The consequences of this Revisionist success for the study of religion and the Revolution were mixed. The Revisionists had argued that the "orthodox" interpretation reduced culture to an effect of more important social and economic structures, and religion to the role of an ideological mask for class interests. While the Revisionist altemative to that reductionism certainly held out the promise of reinvigorating investigations of religion in the Revolutionary period that promise was qualified by a very I What constitutes Revisionism and what makes up a Revisionist are topics to be discussed both in this introduction and in later chapters. Historiographical accounts of the movement abound but are, for the most part, if not Revisionist proper at least Revisionist in tenor. Gary Kates's introduction to The French Revolution: Recent Debqtes and Controversles (New York, 1998) is as good an example of these as any other. For a decidedly non-Revisionist account see Michel Vovelle's article 'Reflections on the Revisionist Interpretation of the French Revolution', French Historical Studies,16 (1990) pp 749-755. particular definition of ideology. For Fwet, French political culture had become secularized as the nation state replaced God as the ultimate end of history. In his argument the grand narative histories of the nation state stood as something of a developmental stage between the apocalyptic chronicles of the Middle Ages and the contemporary structural analysis he himself practiced. Marxist historiography, according to Furet, remained stuck at this developmental stage; no longer religious but not quite secular Marxism was an ideology; a pseudo-religion that constructed itself as both mythic and explanatory rather than one or the other.2 At the heart of Furet's critique of Marxism was a teleological progression of historiographical worldviews that proceeded from the religious, to the pseudo-religious, to the properly secular; and this teleology had serious consequences for the academic study of religion. The most obvious drawback of that progression was the reduction of not just ideology, but also of religion, to anachronistic phenomena any modern society. This is a problem not because it is a necessarily false view, but because it marginalizes those communities and individuals that use religious vocabulary to express their political, social and cultural interests. Furet's definition of ideology radically limits the scope of historical analysis by excluding such groups from participation in the history of their own 2 Furet's use of religious metaphors and analogies to describe Marxist ideology and historiography occur as early as the seminal Revisionist article he co-wrote with Denis Richet'Le Catéchisme révolutionnaire,' Annales E.S.C. 26 (1971):255-289. Revisionist literature since then has been rife with words such as "orthodoxy," "dogma" and "iconoclasm" but the Revisionist articulation of a historiographical debate in religious language goes beyond mere rhetorical flourish. Furet makes a formal theoretical connection behveen religion
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