The French Revolution and Its Legacy

Leaping Democracy into the Unlimited
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-138-61394-2
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 529 g

Reihe: Contemporary Liminality

This book offers an interpretation of the French Revolution and modern democracy, arguing that the revolution gave rise to a democratic power that is liminal by nature, and therefore unlimited, unaccountable on principle, and the basis for a state religion of continuous transformation. It demonstrates these claims by focusing on the universally adulated but little understood sacred motto ‘liberté, egalité, fraternité’, and on the sacrifice and role of Louis XVI in the revolution. Analysing the revolutionary process by which representative democratic government took the shape of political metamorphosis, the book shows that modern democracy does not represent the people but refers to the representation of representation and the existential condition of permanent displacement. The present study will appeal to scholars from across the social, political and human sciences with an interest in the French Revolution, modern democracy, political modernity, contemporary politics and the history of art.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Roman, Camil Francisc

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Prologue

Preface

Introduction: framing the French revolution as fundamental problem of the contemporary

Chapter 1: In and out of the methodological cave: the French revolution as liminal event and predicament of the sacred

Chapter 2: The French revolution and the constitution of metamorphic power (I): from the liminal void to liberté – egalité – fraternité

Chapter 3: The French revolution and the constitution of metamorphic power (II): Jacques Louis David’s Tennis Court Oath and the vision of modern democracy as political metamorphosis

Chapter 4: Liminality and the disincorporation of royal power: the revolutionary events as symbolic-existential breaks with the past

Chapter 5: The execution of Louis XVI and the rise of terror and civil war

Chapter 6: Louis XVI between angelization and the sacrifice of love: the philosophical anthropology of the Christian prince

Conclusion

Epilogue

Bibliography

Name Index

Subject Index

Über Autor(innen)

Camil Francisc Roman is Lecturer in Political Science at John Cabot University. He is also Vice President of the International Political Anthropology Association and member of the Editorial Board of the journal International Political Anthropology. He is interested in reflexive, historical–genealogical and interpretative approaches to the following areas of research: modern democracy and revolutions, modernity and science, politics and religion. His latest publications include ‘Sovereign power and the politics of the pandemic as elementary parasitic social relation’ (2023) and ‘Charisma: from divine gift to the democratic leader-shop’ (2020). He is co-editor of Divinization and Technology. The Political Anthropology of Subversion (2019).