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Terror, the Order of the Day” “TERROR, THE ORDER OF THE DAY”: THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY TERROR AND ITS RESTAGINGS A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. by Cory Clayton Browning August 2015 © 2015 Cory Clayton Browning “TERROR, THE ORDER OF THE DAY”: THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY TERROR AND ITS RESTAGINGS Cory Clayton Browning, Ph.D. Cornell University 2015 This dissertation examines the relationship between terror and democracy in modern French and Francophone history, political theory, culture and literature. It focuses on the Terror and three moments when the Terror resurfaces with explosive force: French Romanticism, the advent of avantgarde theater and anarcho-terrorism in the wake of the Paris Commune and, finally, the Algerian War. Rather than look to the Terror as a founding moment in order to lay bare a monolithic, transhistorical, ontological “truth,” my dissertation, following Foucault, ventures to rethink the Terror genealogically, as a singular event whose various restagings do not coalesce but rather open up diverse modalities of thinking democracy and terror. Recasting Marx’s observation that we make our own history but under conditions handed down from the past, my research strives to apprehend the multiplicity of the Terror has played in shaping what we say, think and do. On one hand, the Terror poses an obstacle to democracy, an intractable weight it relentlessly struggles to jettison, often at its own peril. On the other hand, the Terror has the potential to explode present conditions, offering modes of resisting the present and means to radically reconfigure it. The introduction sets out the stakes by challenging the dominant mode of investigating the Terror postwar: the Terror as precursor to totalitarianism. I demonstrate that by conflating the Terror and totalitarianism, this mode of interpretation inscribes the Terror into the very essence of democracy, making it into a pathological potential that must be contained. I further trace how this mode informs Agamben’s biopolitical reading of democracy via the camp and address current research on aesthetics and affect that challenge the dominant mode of reading the Terror. The first chapter analyzes French Romanticism via the epithet “93 littéraire,” an insult that Victor Hugo would come to embrace and develop, transposing the French Revolution, including the Terror, into poetry and prose such that literature would inherently serve democracy. I argue that Hugo did indeed develop a theory and practice of literature and democracy, one that anticipates the work of Sartre, Macherey, and Rancière. However, in inscribing “literary terror” into literary democracy, I further contend that Hugo serves to challenge and broaden these theories by pointing to the persistence of the politico-theological, not in political theory, but in literature and aesthetics. The second chapter looks to a restaging of this accusation, “La Terreur littéraire,” as it was hurled at the stage in performances of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi. I argue that avant-garde theater developed as both a continuation and transformation of anarcho-terrorism and its reinterpretation of the Terror following the Paris Commune. Through original archival work, I demonstrate that the anarchists, especially in the Marx-Bakunin debate, came to understand Jacobinism not as an ideological worldview but as a form of sensibilité. To counter this legacy, anarcho-terrorism, I claim, sought to open up new modes of perception by violently transforming material reality. It is through this frame that I then read Jarry’s allusions to anarcho-terrorist attacks in his theory and practice of theater. I argue that Jarry and the anarchists suggest a properly anarchic aesthetic education that would not lead to an Aesthetic State as in Schiller’s response to the Terror. The third chapter analyzes terrorism and its representations in the theory and practice of emancipatory violence during the Algerian War. I examine Zohra Drif’s apology for terrorism, in which she rejects André Malraux and Albert Camus’ literary constructions of the terrorist as a twentieth-century Saint-Just, in order to reframe how we read Hegel and the Terror in the context of colonial struggle. I argue that Drif and Fanon challenge the binary that pits ideas against lived experience; rather violence is an “absolute praxis” that may open up to new experiences and ideas. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH After completing a Bachelor of Arts at the University of California, San Diego with highest honors and a Master’s in French Literature at the Universities of Paris 7 and 8 with a “mention très bien,” Cory Browning began his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2006. In Fall 2014, he took on a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of French at the University of Oregon. During his time at Cornell and in Paris doing research, he has presented his research at several national and international conferences. He won the Naomi Schor Award for Best Graduate Student Paper at the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium in 2013. In addition to presenting at this colloquium several times, he has also given papers at the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries French Studies Conference, the UK-based Society of Dix- neuviémistes, American Comparative Literature Association, and in various venues at Cornell University. As a teacher with twelve years experience, he has conducted courses in a variety of disciplines and at diverse institutions (Cornell, Sciences-Po – Paris, Université de Paris 8, a lycée in Paris, and as an English language instructor for businesses in Paris while completing his Master’s). At Cornell, he won first prize for Outstanding Performance as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in 2009. In addition to research and teaching, he has also served on the board of diacritics, translated articles for diacritics and for a forthcoming collected volume, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism, edited by Claudia Verhoeven and Carola Dietze. His English translation of Laurent Dubreuil’s Le refus de la politique will be published by University of Edinburgh Press in early 2016. He was elected as Graduate Student Representative in the Romance Studies Department at Cornell for the academic year 2011-2012. He also served as President for the Cornell Romance Studies Graduate Conference in 2007-2008 on “The Literary Animal.” His dissertation was directed by Laurent Dubreuil (serving as chair), Jonathan Culler, and Mitchell Greenberg. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation bears the marks of the many great minds who have encouraged, influenced and cultivated it, most notably my director Laurent Dubreuil, whose generosity, creativity, patience, intellectual rigor, support, honesty, and humor have served as a great model and a much appreciated support. I admire his provocation and willingness to take risks and hope that this dissertation conveys some of that. Jonathan Culler has served as an unassuming sounding board and source of great intellectual encouragement, curiosity, and sensibility in the face of institutional turbulence. Mitchell Greenberg generously stepped in during the final stages of the dissertation and provided valuable guidance and feedback in navigating a difficult job market. I greatly thank all three of them. In addition to my committee members, many others have contributed to this dissertation and to my formation as a researcher, teacher, community member, and individual. In the early phases of the dissertation, Richard Klein and Dominick LaCapra played instrumental and formative roles; I wish them the best in retirement. Bruno Bosteels’ Mellon Seminar on “Theories of the Subject” brought greater theoretical dexterity to the project and focused its stakes in relation to current theoretical debates. Diane Brown, Managing Editor of diacritics, served as a sort of fourth member to my committee; I took advantage of her door always being open on many occasions. Informal discussions with Laurent Ferri in and around Olin Library offered a breath of fresh air and always managed to open up new perspectives with invigorating curiosity. Jason Frank’s course on democratic theory helped bring the project into fruition my first year at Cornell. I have also benefitted greatly from generous institutional support from Cornell University and its commitment to interdisciplinary studies and independent, critical thought. As Director of Graduate Studies, Tracy McNulty helped teach me the intricacies of departmental decision- making and the challenges of building community. Rebecca Davidson, our Graduate Field Assistant, brought a human face to the institution and helped foster community among graduate students. On a more personal note, I also want to thank Selin Yilmaz for her support, tenacity, liveliness, and sense of adventure. Joshua Jordan has been a close friend and an intellectual ally over the years. Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not also thank Cecily Swanson, from whom I learned much, and my parents, who gave me support and unrelenting freedom. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PRELIMINARY SECTIONS Biographical Sketch iii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents v List of Figures vi DISSERTATION Introduction 1 Ontologizing the Terror 5 Rethinking, Restaging the Terror 14 1. Hugo’s “93 littéraire”: Literature, Democracy, the Terror 18 Romanticism as Democratic Revolution: “Réponse à un acte d’accusation” 23 Romanticism as Literary Terror: Hugo, Robespierre, Rancière 36 The Democratic Utility of the Grotesque: Préface to Cromwell 39 The Empty Place: Les Misérables and the Theoretical Staging of Democracy 43 “93 littéraire”: Reinscribing the Terror in literature and democracy 55 2. Aesthetic Education of the Bomb: Anarchist “propagande par le fait” and Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi. 68 “Neuf-Thermidor littéraire”? 68 The Crisis of Revolutionary Action: The Weight of the Terror 74 Bankruptcy of “la méthode terroristique”: Bakunin, Marx, and the Commune 78 Lessons from the Commune: The Lurking Jacobin 85 Propaganda of the Deed as Aesthetic Education 93 Propaganda of the Deed Against Schiller’s Aesthetic State 105 Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi: Theater of Action as Intellectual Demolition 110 3.
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