The French Revolution in Theory by Sophie Wahnich;

Author:Sophie Wahnich;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing
Published: 2022-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AS A MYTH, ACCORDING TO LÉVI-STRAUSS

What, very precisely, does Lévi-Strauss say:

The contemporary Frenchman (l’homme contemporain) must believe in this myth. [. . .] But it does not follow that his meaning, just because it is the richest (and so most suited to inspire practical action), should be the truest. Here the dialectic turns against itself. This truth is a matter of context, and if we place ourselves outside it—as the man of science is bound to do—what appeared as an experienced truth first becomes confused and finally disappears altogether. The so-called men of the Left still cling to a period of contemporary history which bestowed the blessing of a congruence between practical imperatives and schemes of interpretation. Perhaps this golden age of historical consciousness has already passed; and that this eventuality can at any rate be envisaged proves that what we have here is only a contingent context like the fortuitous “focusing” of an optical instrument when its object-glass and eye-piece move in relation to each other. We are still “in focus” so far as the French Revolution is concerned, but so we should have been in relation to the Fronde had we lived earlier.15

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