In Defence of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution

by Sophie Wahnich, Slavoj Žižek (Foreword), David Fernbach (Translator)

For two hundred years after the French Revolution, the Republican tradition celebrated the execution of princes and aristocrats, defending the Terror that the Revolution inflicted upon on its enemies. But recent decades have brought a marked change in sensibility. The Revolution is no longer judged in terms of historical necessity but rather by “timeless” standards of morality. In this succinct essay, Sophie Wahnich explains how, contrary to prevailing interpretations, the institution of Terror sought to put a brake on legitimate popular violence—in Danton’s words, to “be terrible so as to spare the people the need to be so”—and was subsequently subsumed in a logic of war. The Terror was “a process welded to a regime of popular sovereignty, the only alternatives being to defeat tyranny or die for liberty.”

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, France, French Revolution, European History

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the first things to notice about ‘In Defence of the Terror’ is that the provocative title is exclusive to the English edition. The original French title of 2003 literally translates as, ‘Liberty or Death: Essay on the Terror and terrorism’. On balance, I think the 2012 English title is more apposite, although the earlier one was clearly intended to place focus on the concluding pages. These contrast the Terror in 18th century France with the early years of what would become the War on Terror in 21st century America. It’s an interesting comparison, but one that seems dated now that the War on Terror has mutated into whatever you’d call today’s terrible geopolitical situation. Moreover, reading quotes from Bush’s speeches after 9/11 genuinely makes one yearn for the good old days of Dubya. Sure, he may have invaded and completely wrecked several countries, but at least he didn’t cheer nuclear proliferation! He may not have known anything about foreign policy, but at least the neocons that surrounded him did and weren't inclined to provoke China! And he may have stolen the presidency, but at least he didn’t do so with Russian backing! Etc, etc.

Anyway, this is a short but dense book largely concerned with the period of 1792 to 1794, seeking to explain how what was retrospectively termed The Terror came to occur. Although the density is manageable, it merits mention that Slavoj Žižek’s introduction is easier to read than the book itself. Probably because he leaves Lacan alone for once. This may also be a function of the book being in translation, moreover the subject matter is a tricky one. Such was the utter condemnation of the Terror from essentially the moment Robespierre was dead onward through the centuries that explaining why it happened often seems to be equated with justifying it. Both are seemingly considered unacceptable. This leads to an intellectually unsatisfactory tendency I call ‘Robespierre stole my parking space’. In such cases, histories of the French revolution appear to place sole blame (and the tone is unequivocally blame) on Robespierre for masterminding the Terror, as if no such thing would have happened had he been elsewhere at the time. This is very much the view formulated and promulgated during the Thermidorian period, as described in Ending the Terror: The French Revolution After Robespierre. Wahnich’s analysis looks beyond the Big Names of the revolution, which I found much more satisfactory insofar as I could understand it. To my mind, the key point was this:

Establishing the Terror had the aim of preventing emotion from giving rise to dissolution or massacre, symbolising what had not been done in September 1792 and thus reintroducing a regulatory function for the Assembly. For Danton, the members of the Convention had to be ‘the worthy regulators of national energy’.

Wahnich discusses at some length the role of the various legal instruments of the Terror as institutionalising popular vengeance, reassuring the public that their new and fragile republic would be protected from its many enemies. I found her argument that the escalation of the Terror occurred when a war mentality took over broadly convincing. What is most fascinating to me about the Republic of 1793 is its unprecedented nature. The emotions this evinced in a population who had been subject to absolute monarchy less than five years before and who had a longstanding tradition of violent turbulence (often involving barricades) can scarcely be imagined three hundred years later. Wahnich’s attempt to do so also gives the Terror a more thoughtful analysis than I’ve read elsewhere and which it demands. I was especially struck by this, on the Thermidorian conception of the Terror:

By inventing the neologism ‘terrorist’, the Thermidorians not only anthropologised a violence that was also seen as popular, but they actively obscured what had given this terror a situational legitimacy: a juridico-political process of collective responsibility. In fact, the [constitutionally enshrined] duty of insurrection made each person a watchman who had to either rise up at risk of his life, or take responsibility for the decisions of the national Convention.

Active forgetting is what is effected after the time of foundation, when the notion of the irreconcilable enemy becomes obsolete and intolerable. From this point on, the ‘terrorists’ were the Other of the republicans. The most fervent of these, such as Victor Hugo - little suspected of counter-revolutionary ideology - constantly asserted that, even faced with such as crime as that of 2nd December 1851 [Louis-Napoléon’s coup and re-establishment of the French Empire], they would never call for revolutionary terror. The acts of those defeated by history became infamous for those of their heirs who might be of a mind to repeat them. Even if they were understood - and Hugo’s ‘1793’ bears witness to this - no situation could lead to their repetition. Even those responsible for defending revolutionary memory knew that the foundational time was not replayable, and that such acts of terror belonged to a different age.

It is also fascinating to read the explanations for the Terror in the revolutionaries’ own words, for example:

Your revolutionary tribunal has despatched 300 scoundrels in the last year; did not the Spanish Inquisition do more? And for what, in the name of God! And did the English courts execute no one this year? ...And no-one mentions the German prisons in which the people are buried. [St Just, 26th February 1794]

The deputies of the primary assemblies have come to exercise among us the initiative of terror against domestic enemies. Let us respond to their wishes. No amnesty for any traitor. The just man does not show mercy to the evil. Let us signal popular vengeance on the conspirators within by the sword of the law. [Danton, 12th August 1793]

Weep for the guilty victims assigned to the vengeance of the laws, who fell under the sword of popular justice; but let your grief have an end, as with all human things. Keep some tears for more touching calamities. Weep for a hundred thousand citizens slain by tyranny, weep for our citizens dying under the fires of their roofs, and the sons of citizens murdered in the cradles or in the arms of their mothers. Do you not also have brothers, children, and wives to avenge? The family of French legislators is the patrie; it is the entire human race apart from tyrants and their accomplices. Weep then for humanity dead under their hateful yoke. [Robespierre, 28th September 1792]

On this front, I recommend Virtue and Terror, a collection of Robespierre’s speeches and writings (likewise introduced by Žižek). I remember being slightly alarmed that his argument for the execution of Louis XVI wholly convinced me. ‘In Defence of the Terror’ has re-awakened my long term obsession with the French Revolution. Maybe it’s time to read something by Eric Hazan.

[Nathan Fisher · Rating 1 out of 5]

po-mo anti-materialist lunacy — the citations are exactly what you would expect from someone with no interest in history except as a stomping ground for critical theory free jazz (lots of Benjamin, heavy sprinkling of Arendt and Agamben) — of course, if historical process mainly holds your interest as a textual object and the only economy even perceptible through the haze is the 'narrative' or 'emotional' one, this is what you wind up with.

[Henry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why defend the Terror with lofty, longwinded academic jargon instead of historical analyses of actual people, events, and primary sources? Are 2012 academic minds with their ontologies and teleologies more qualified to defend the Terror than 'the Incorruptible' who actually launched it?

For a real defense of the Terror, read Robespierre, not this book:

"Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible . . . Is force made only to protect crime? And is the thunderbolt not destined to strike the heads of the proud? . . . 'Indulgence for the royalists,' cry certain men, 'mercy for the villains!' No! mercy for the innocent, mercy for the weak, mercy for the unfortunate, mercy for humanity."

https://www.marxists.org/history/fran...

[Spooky Socialist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sophie Wahnich’s In Defence of the Terror is a mixed bag. Arguing from the paradigm of emotions to answer questions of foundational violence, she convincingly claims that the Terror, rather than being an explosive frenzy of carnage, was a method to control such an outburst of emotion. As the revolutionary government failed to act, the people of France lost respect for the Assembly as they were increasingly forced to take the law in their own hands with the 20 June invasion of Tuileries Palace, the 10 August insurrection against the king, and, most importantly, the September Massacres. Realizing that they had to translate the emotions of the people into legal institutions to avoid needless massacres and save their legitimacy, the Reign of Terror was enacted.

In addition to Zizek’s foreward, the book draws an interesting connection between 1789 and 1989, with capitalist realism dominating discourse around moments of revolutionary fervor. The fall of the Soviet bloc in 1989, in the eyes of contemporary capitalism, marked an end to an era of violent revolution that began in 1789. Instead, a new mode of moral historicity dominates the Terror, as “To be a happy heir to the French Revolution means becoming complicit with a historical crime” (8). The Terror is evoked in parallel to the gulag and other political projects of the 20th century, dashed to the dust bin of totalitarianism.

Wahnich’s strongest points of analysis are when she breaks with this capitalist realism to craft a new historical narrative. She calls for a “return to the archives” to reopen debates and challenge the contemporary prevailing paradigm about the Terror (14). Nevertheless, her commitment to history wavers with her frequent dips into postmodernism that, as a whole, weaken her argument. She frequently deploys self-admittedly amorphous terms such as “sacred” and “humanity.” At some points, she also abandons materialist analysis altogether in favor of a mechanical emotional-determinism: “In order to understand the emotional economy of the demand for terror, we do not have to ask whether the obsession with plots was really well-founded…What effectively instilled dread was this rupture of the sacred” (28). Although her employment of postmodern ideas is fairly comprehensible for the first three-quarters of the book, the final two chapters suffer deeply from it.

[Filip · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging if short work on the political processes that brought about and defined the Great Terror. Wahnich scrutinizes the Terror through several Foucauldian power mechanisms; the work is an apologist examination of discourse that largely succeeds in the task Wahnich sets forth for it. Wahnich does not seek to render judgement on The Terror from a historical perspective but rather to attempt, through impeccable research, the fluid nature of sovereignty in the Republic, and the Terror's...necessity? Inevitability? I'll let Wachnich's research speak for itself.

Thoroughly well-argued, challenging in all the right ways.

[Sahand · Rating 2 out of 5]

انتظارم بیشتر بود از کتاب خصوصاً با عنوان برانگیزاننده‌ی انگلیسیش. متن اصلی کتاب درواقع یک مقاله‌ی بلنده ولی نویسنده نمی‌تونه منسجم تزش رو پیش ببره. پیش‌گفتار ژیژک و ضمیمه‌ای که مترجم فارسی از گفتارهای سن‌ژوست، مارا و روبسپیر اضافه کرده از متن اصلی کتاب جذاب‌تر بودند.
ترجمه‌ی فارسی از روی ترجمه‌ی انگلیسی انجام شده و درمجموع به نسبت ترجمه‌ی بدی نیست؛ اگرچه باز بعضی جاها غلط‌های فاحش داره و بعضاً می‌تونست روان‌تر باشه.
عنوان اصلی فرانسوی کتاب "آزادی یا مرگ"ه با زیرعنوان "مقاله‌ای درباره‌ی ترور و تروریسم"؛ تو انگلیسی عنوان اصلی "در دفاع از ترور" استفاده شده با زیرعنوان "آزادی یا مرگ در انقلاب فرانسه"؛ تو فارسی هم زیرعنوان همونه، ولی ظاهراً به خاطر ممیزی عنوان اصلی شده "ترور علیه تروریسم".

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 3 out of 5]

just read the first six paragraphs of zizek's introduction and skip the rest of it

I think Zizek is absolutely correct in claiming that Sophie Wahnich approaches the discourse of the Terror as Francois Furet does in Interpreting the French Revolution but from the "opposite perspective". Unlike some milquetoast social democrats or liberals, he does not suppose that 1792 can be disentangled from 1789 ("decaffeinated revolution"). Rather, it is the one and the same discourse of sovereign 'making die'. He departs from Wahnich in that he regards the discourse as inherently self-radicalizing without regards to the exceptional circumstances. For Wahnich, the Terror and the law of the 22 Priaral must be contextualized as an exercise of popular sovereignty that not only not encouraged "generalized bloodshed" (as the received tradition and popular conception supposes) but precisely functioned as an institutional mechanism of sovereign self-restriant.

Wahnich reconstructs the revolutionary sensibility that the Jacobins tirelessly worked to instill in the citizenry to render explicit the exceptionality of the events of the Year II and III. But this is not just another twist on the "exceptional circumstances" stock excuse offered by many a Republican apologists. So what is the sensibility? In the words of Robespierre, it persists in demarcating the line between the sentiment of common humanity AND the love of patrie , between weeping, without any distinctions, for the violence inflicted on bodies, on bare lives, AND weeping for the infringement of mutual liberty upon which "common humanity" is founded, between global humanism AND situational anti humanism.

The closing chapter deals with the foundational violence of the Terror and how its contemporary resonance is perversely interpreted by liberal democrats and neoconservatives who implicate the Terror with the Holocaust, the Moscow show trials and the whole stock of state sponsored terror. Whether they acknowledge it or not, they are the heirs of Thermidorians, who have emerged victorious in history and consequently have established their "redwashed" portrait of the period of the Terror as generalized bloodbath as THE defining image of the Revolution. Against this tradition, Wahnich maintains that the dimension of right and justice is what sets the public vengeance of the Terror apart from the 9/11 terror attack and the revolutionaries from the terrorists.

Despite the wealth of theoretical illuminations offered at important points in the discussion, I don't feel like the author has made a strong enough case to redeem the sovereign autonomy of the Terror. Perhaps I unconsciously share to some extent Furet's condemnation against those apologists of Terror who take the Revolutionaries' discourse at face value, and who, instead of enacting some objective historical distance from the event, continue to celebrate and identify with the discourse itself.

[Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those books where I'll acknowledge that the poor rating that I am giving it could be me. I am sure I know more about the French Revolution than most Americans but I am far from an expert. I was excited about this book though because I found the central thesis to be compelling. I couldn't follow it however. Not only could I not follow the central thesis, I couldn't even string together what the author was talking about across four or five pages. Perhaps the translation was poor, perhaps I just simply lack the referential knowledge to know what she was talking about 90% of the time but I found the book overall to be a painful slog. I considered not finishing it but kept laboring under the impression that it might all come together at the end for me. It didn't.

I am not a stranger to the writings of Adorno or Ranciere or Zizek (though my assessment of the degree to which their writings are full of s*** varies greatly) and this book takes a similar tone to Zizek's most pretentious works. The working assumption from the author is that the reader can move effortlessly between inside baseball references to critical theory, relatively obscure (in the U.S.) german philosophy and an intimate knowledge of French history with ease. I was not up to the task. Frequently, I found myself rereading the same paragraph over and over again wondering what was even being said, ultimately finding it to be utterly obtuse. I even diagrammed a sentence or two to no avail.

Perhaps I'll revisit this book someday after taking a deep dive historically into the French Revolution. Perhaps I simply lack the prerequisite knowledge. At the end of the book, I felt like a member of a thesis defense tenure committee left to decide if what I had just read was a work of genius simply above my head or a collection of purposely opaque post-modernist claptrap. I settled on the latter.

[Michael Bohli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was ist Terror genau, wie kann ich Terrorismus in den menschlichen Handlungen und Werte einordnen und wie begegne ich dieser Taten? Fragen, die in der heutigen Zeit wieder wichtig werden und immer wieder stark in unseren Alltag eingreifen. Doch zu schnell lässt man sich von halbrichtigen Aussagen und Aktionen leiten - ohne die eigentlichen, gar philosophischen Gründe zu erörtern und die Reaktionen des eigenen Staates zu kritisieren.

"Freiheit oder Tod: Über Terror und Terrorismus" von Sophie Wahnich versucht dem Leser eine neue Sichtweise des Terrors beizubringen - anhand eines Essays über die Französische Revolution. Was damals die Bevölkerung zum Suverän machte und somit eine neue Staatsform kreierte in der die Menschlichkeit mehr Gewicht erhielt, ist allerdings konträr zu den heutigen Handlungen unter dem Mantel des Terrorismus. Im Gegensatz zu dem damaligen Umwurf geschehen die blutigen Taten gewisser Gruppierungen heute nicht mit dem Ziel, die Menschlichkeit und Freiheit für alle Erdbewohner zu garantieren. Es sind Kriegshandlungen, die von den Regierungen mit eben gleichen entgeltet werden. Die grösste Problematik der heutigen Zeit ist jedoch, dass dieser tagtägliche Krieg nie direkt angesprochen wird.

Es ist "Normalität" geworden, dass man dem Terror mit exekutiver Gewalt entgegen tritt, die eine grundsätzliche Menschlichkeit ebenso verachten. Doch im Raum der Bevölkerung wird dies weder thematisiert noch als konkret falsch betrachtet. Der Suverän wurde somit verändert und die Verhältnisse und neu gewonnenen Werte damaliger Revolutionen somit ad absurdum geführt. Terrorismus ist kein Mittel für eine Besserung, unsere Reaktionen allerdings auch nicht. Sophie Wahnich versucht dies mit ihrer Schrift zu erklären und gibt dem Leser neue Wegweiser für die wahren Werte des Kampfes.

[Gabriel Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this defense of revolutionary violence from a historian who has specialized in this period, who itemizes the foot draggings and betrayals which led to timely popular intervention (sometimes called mob violence). I liked the anthropological foray which sharply distinguished the terror from any form of "ritual sacrifice" because "the sovereign sphere is the sphere in which killing is not homicide", nor is it ritual sacrifice.

Wahnich understands the terror, historically and philosophically . Her short book is instructive.

At some point her publisher perhaps wanted to make the book sexy by commissioning an intro from Zizek and he provided a weird introduction almost as long as her book, filled with his characteristic stimulants, teasing paradoxes that scintillate but dissolve into nonsense on reflection, as well as occidental talking points (french revolutionary violence is ok but islamic revokutionary violence isn't)

She should reissue this as a pamphlet without that f-ing intro. It is valuable and should stay in print.

[Jena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuando estudié Derecho nos enseñaron a valorar con un 10 a la Revolución Francesa, porque fue el acontecimiento que fundó la democracia moderna, pero nunca dijeron con claridad la cantidad de sangre derramada, de las numerosas vidas inmoladas en el altar de la "Patrie." Por supuesto que se mencionaron a los legisladores más notables de la Convención Nacional como Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins, Mirebeau, etc, quienes perdieron la cabeza en el artefacto de Monsieur Guillotin.
En 1993, a causa de las celebraciones del Bicentenario de la mencionada Revolución, se desasociaron los acontecimientos de 1789, (la toma de la Bastilla) y los de los años 1792-3, cuando se enfrentaron los revolucionarios con el Ancien Régime, que ocasionó la caída de la Monarquía y la invención de la República. Todo esto quedó en la sombra, principalmente los acontecimientos legislativos de 1793, cuando se abolió la esclavitud; se estableció la educación y la asistencia pública,que fueron removidos del contexto de la celebración, sin investigar cómo esos valores irrefutables estaban ligados al "Terror."
¿Qué se entiende por el "Terror"? En el diccionario Histórico de la Revolución Francesa se declara que: "El Terror fue inicialmente un esfuerzo por limitar y definir el campo legal concedido a la "violencia fundacional" de la Revolución contra el Antiguo Régimen... esta violencia probó ser su salvación." Esta violencia a que se refiere la cita, es producto del anhelo de venganza de las clases oprimidas que se lanzaron a la conquista de sus derechos, por esto René Girard dice sobre la diferencia que existe entre la venganza y la justicia Penal: "El sistema Penal no tiene otro principio de justicia esencialmente diferente del principio de venganza. El mismo principio mueve en ambos casos: aquel de la retribución o reciprocidad violenta. O este principio es justo y la justicia está ya presente en la venganza, o de otra manera no hay justicia en ninguno de los casos. La venganza significa que alguien tome la justicia en sus propias manos."
El Terror proponía acción rápida para derrotar a los enemigos de la Patria antes de destruyeran a la Revolución y sus instituciones como la Ley de Sospechosos. El único problema fue que el control que en hipótesis tenían los revolucionarios en este ejercicio de soberanía, se les fue de las manos.
Al caer lascabezas de los revolucionarios más furiosos, se decidió derogar el artículo 2o. del la Declaración de los derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano, que consistía en el derecho que el pueblo tenía a la insurgencia y a la resistencia a la opresión, porque había abierto la puerta al abuso. Este derecho había sido la justificación de legitimidad de la Revolución se convirtió en intolerable y así, fue suprimido.

[Judith Smulders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific new insights and a rebellious stance against the contemporary fashion in reviewing the French revolution and the Terror. Naturally the brutality of these events are hardly appealing yet mrs. Wahnich sweeps all these doubts in hindsight under the rug by providing us with some clarity on why so much violence was used and to which goals.

1. The necessity for a stop to revolutions inside of a state-framework (failed revolution of the Bolsheviks, corruption of the French revolution).
2. The Terror (revolutionary courts created in 1793) was merely a response to the popular demand for justice and punishment of previous oppressors (We must be terrible so that the people do not have to be). It was a direct result of the September Massacres of 1792 and the courts were installed in order to prevent lawlessness and excessive, uncontrolled violence.
3. That, unlike the current, widespread opinion, the French revolution gave birth to the modern, democratic, secular world and not to despotism. Some critics of the sans-culottes have even gone so far as to liken them to nazi’s.
4. The cruelty of the Terror was what safeguarded the revolution instead of corrupting it.
5. Now that centuries have past since the occurance of the Terror and the French revolution it would be wise to acknowledge the fact that whilst the Great Terror might have been a cruel form of vengeance, it was vengeance nonetheless. It was the accumulation of centuries of oppression, bloodshed and starvation that led to popular justice resulting in the deaths of the persons who had committed these crimes against the people.
6. The length of the excercise of public justice was directly in line with the preservation of the newly obtained freedom. It was mercy that could prove to be a fatal flaw and that would risk all that had been achieved.
7. Similar to the Bolshevik revolution and the Islamic revolution in Iran, the true ideologues and revolutionarires in France were branded terrorists or traitors and had to pay the price for upholding the true tenets of the revolution at the hands of those who had corrupted these goals into material en egocentric aims (Robespierre and Saint-Just in France, Trotsky in the Soviet Union and Mousavi in Iran as opposed to Napoleon, Stalin and Khamenei).
8. Revolutionary terror is not terrorism. If motivated by an end to repression and discrimination it is fully justified. (in the Declaration of the rights of man resistance to oppression is mentioned).

[Andriani]

Zizek, quoting Mark Twain in the foreword, makes the case for not dismissing the Terror as merely some explosion of violence:

"There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."
(Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court).

[Stephen Tuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book is a little misleading - I think accuracy has been sacrificed for effect. The title in French is "La Liberte ou la Mort: Essai sur la Terreur et la terreurisme" which translates as "Liberty or Death: Essay on the Terror and terrorism".

Wahnich's argument - that the Terror of the early 1790s was a byproduct of the transfer and fluidity of sovereignty associated with the Revolution - is an interesting one, but not always easy to follow. The book shows the depressing French fondness for high theory, and at times the translation is a little clunky (from time to time I was translating the English text back into French to try and grasp the meaning). Nevertheless, it's an interesting (if not entirely persuasive) theoretical analysis and worth persevering with.

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say about this about this book. It's stunning. The regicide turns out to have been an act of violence minimalization. St. Just initially wanted to merely exile the nobles but events forced his hand. Wahnich has an ace up her sleeve: she has read G. Agamben, very carefully. Here's where that becomes useful. The terror was primarily symbolic. Why is that interesting? Well, it decisively refutes the counter-revolutionary slander against the revolution. So that's nice. More specifically: the revolution taught us to create public rituals that distribute information (in his theological language, glory) without the arbitrary restriction of a hereditary monarch. The citoyens lost nothing when the royal family was guillotined, and gained their freedom.

[Tarek Alali · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘ LET US BE TER R IBLE, TO SAVE
THE PEOPLE FROM BEING SO ’

بمقدمة لسلافوي جيجك، يفتتح فيها الكتاب بإشارة لتصريح سياسي صيني كان يحضر مفاوضات نهاية الحروب الكورية 1953، حين سئل عن حكمه
على الثورة الفرنسية، ليقول إنه "من المبكر جدًا أن نحكم عليها". الفكرة تقليدية: إن التاريخ هو دومًا تاريخ الحاضر. يقول جيجك إن أحداث 1990 وتفكك "الديمقراطيات الشعبية" كان بمثابة حقبة بدأت 1789 وانتهت 1990، وأعاد النقاش التاريخي حول الثورة الفرنسية. ينتقد جيجك، والكتاب وهو يعيد قراءة سني الإرهاب في الثورة الفرنسية ينتقد، القراءة الليبرالية التي تقول 1789 وليس 1793. هذه تبدو مشكلة نظرية ومشكلة ممارسة سياسية أصابت التأسيس الليبرالي منذ البداية في كتابة تاريخ السياسة الحديثة وفي "الانخراط في الأحداث السياسية الثورية"، امتدت لاحقًا لليسار، تتمثل في انتقاء وإبراز اللحظة السالبة والدفاعية في الصراع على السلطة والحكم، والتوقف عندها كلحظة رومانسية توافق الاشتهاء النظري للثورة، وتعني عدم قبول المصير والكفاح المتشبك بالحدث. الأمر لم يعد في هذا شيئًا خارجيًا، أي يمكن إصلاحه من الخارج عن طريق احتكار الحدث والتفاعل معه وتطويره متشبكًا بالمصير الشخصي، بل صار شيئًا يتعلق بضرب معين من الذوات السياسية لا يمكنها أن تكون إلا عرضًا جزءًا من حدث ومصير تأسيسي. بطريقة سلافوي جيجك، إن الليبراليين الحساسين يريدون ثورة ليس فيها رائحة الثورة مثل من يحتسي قهوة بلا كافيين. وفي هذا الموقف من الثورة الفرنسية ومن غيرها، يلتقي الموقف الليبرالي والمحافظ على اعتبار الثورة كارثة، ما كان يمكن تحقيقه أو يجري تحقيقه بهدوء وبسياسات محافظة و"نقدية" صار كارثة تمثلت في "دولة اليعاقبة الشمولية"، التي أسست لكل شموليات القرن العشرين.


الكتاب هو جهد لتفنيد الدوكسا الليبرالية والمحافظة بخصوص "حكم الإرهاب"، فالمؤلفة ترى إن المحاكم الثورية لم تكن تعبيرًا عن انفلات جنوني للعنف، بل كانت وسيلة قانونية سياسية لتقييد العنف المنفجر على خلفيات سياسية واجتماعية طبقية، وإن المحاكم الثورية، بما فيها محكمة المشبوهين، كانت تقوم على فكرة سياسية "المشاعر الإنسانية"، أي على تحقيق منضبط للمشاعر الصادقة والإنسانية للثورة والغضب والثأر والدفاع عن الوطن والدفاع عن الثورة وعن الحرية، ضد نحو 12 قرنًا من امتهان الإنسان وحريته وضد تحالفات القوى الملكية الفرنسية والبروسية والنمساوية التي تهدد دولة الثورة الوليدة. تلتقط الكاتبة العديد من الأفكار الذكية عن أغامبين بخصوص مشكلة انتقال القداسة والسيادة من جسد الملك إلى جسد الشعب، فالمركزية والشمولية اليعقوبية لم تكن إلا الضد من فكرة "الدولة هي أنا الملكية"، كما إن فكرة السيادة التقليدية التي تقوم على "أن تميت" و"أن تتركه ليحيا"، قبل مولد وتطور سياسيات الحياة المتمثلة في أن تحيي وأن تتركه ليموت، وجدت تعبيرها في "العنف الشعبي" وفي "المحاكم الثورية" التي صارت هي مصدر السيادة في الفكر الجمهوري الوليد. تنقل الكاتبة خطب ومراسلات أعضاء الجمعية الوطنية من روبيسبيير وغيره، وتلاحظ تبدل عناصرها الدلالية قبل وبعد مجازر أيلول الفظيعة، ومما يثير الانتباه فيها هو التعامل المتكرر مع فكرة المشاعر الإنسانية الطبيعية بجمالياتها في حالتي الثورة والغضب والثأر، وترصد مرحلتين: الأولى شاع فيها خطاب وسياسة للمشاعر يدور حول فكرة القانون، وذلك حتى مشهدية حدث العاشر من أوغسطس، حيث، مع ازدياد تهديد القوى الملكية على الحدود الفرنسية وفي باريس، صار ينظر لخطاب وسياسات الجمعية الوطنية بخصوص القانون وحقوق الإنسان بأنها نفاق وعدالة غير كافية، وإنها تحد من إرادة الشعب والثورة ومن حريته للتعبير عن حبه الصادق لوطنه وعن خوفه على ثورته وعن حماسته للفداء بالدم:


"خاطبتهم بلغة القانون الجافة، وتحدثت بمشاعر الغضب العميق التي شعرت بها. أمرت الجميع بالخروج (من السجن قبل ارتكاب المذبحة). لكن، ما إن خرجت حتى عادوا دخلوا.
هذا الرفض لا يعبر عن نزعة عدوانية جديدة، بل يشير إلى أن الوسطاء (الجمعية الوطنية) فشلوا في صياغة القوانين الضرورية لصيانة السلم الأهلي، ولهذا قيل عنهم إنهم عديمو الفائدة وتافهين. ومع ذلك، ظلت بعض الحجج تتردد صداها:
عندما طلب عمدة فرساي العفو عن الأبرياء، رد بلومكيل، أحد أبطال الأحداث الذي كان يدير العمليات، بإخراج الأبرياء. لكن العمدة لم يتمكن من التفريق بين الأبرياء والمذنبين."

According to the charge sheet of 20 Vendémaire year III (AD Seine
et Oise, 42 L 58), cited by Bernard Conein, Langage politique et mode
d’affrontement. Le jacobinisme et les massacres de Septembre, PhD
thesis, Paris: EHESS, 1978.


وفي المرحلة الثانية، مع إنشاء محاكمة المشبوهين ومع تصاعد درامي للمحاكمات الصورية والإعدام بالمقصلة (شفرة الحلاقة الوطنية)، نلاحظ استجابة سياسية للتماشي مع "المشاعر الإنسانية الصادقة للثوار الفرنسيين"، وهذا، من ناحية ثانية، محاولة لقوننة ودولنة هذه المشاعر في سياق سياسي قانوني يحد من تفجرها في أحداث دامية لا تنتهي على شكل أحداث أيلول. في كل ذلك، تبين الكاتبة أن المحاكم الثورية وسورات العنف كانت استجابة لتهديد داخلي وخارجي حقيقي للثورة المضادة، لشبح قرون من حكم الملكية وحكم الأوغاد (في الخطاب المتداول، هناك تركيز على أن ما حدث في سني الإرهاب الثوري لم يكن مجرد انفعال واستجابة ظرفية وانتقام على خلفية هذا الحدث أو ذاك، بل كان سياسة مضادة تحاول حرق المراحل وتفويت فرصة الثورة المضادة وانتقامًا لحوالي ألف سنة من القمع والاضطهاد والمهانة).

"ابكوا على الضحايا المذنبين تحت سيف العدالة الشعبية؛ لكن ليكن لحزنكم نهاية، كما لكل الأمور البشرية. احتفظوا بدموعكم لمآسي أشد إيلامًا. ابكوا على مئة ألف وطني ذبحهم الطغاة، ابكوا على مواطنينا الذين يموتون تحت نيران أسقف بيوتهم، وعلى أبناء المواطنين الذين قُتلوا في مهدهم أو بين أحضان أمهاتهم. أليس لكم أيضًا إخوة وأبناء وزوجات تنتقمون لهم؟ إن عائلة المشرّعين الفرنسيين هي الوطن؛ بل هي الجنس البشري بأسره، باستثناء الطغاة وأعوانهم. ابكوا إذن على الإنسانية التي ماتت تحت نير كراهيتهم. لكن تعزّوا إن أردتم، بإسكات كل العواطف العادية، ضمان سعادة بلدكم والإعداد لسعادة العالم. تعزّوا إن أردتم إعادة المساواة والعدالة المنفيتين إلى الأرض، واقتلاع منابع الجرائم ومصائب جنسكم بالقوانين العادلة. إن الحساسية التي ترتجف حصرًا تقريبًا لأعداء الحرية تبدو لي موضع ريبة."

Robespierre. Archives parlementaires, vol. 3, p. 62 (28 September 1792).

[Benjamin Britton · Rating 4 out of 5]

“From time to time, a book appears about which we can say: we were not waiting merely for a book like this; this is the book we were waiting for...

Both liberal and conservative critics of the French Revolution present it as a founding event of modern ‘totalitarianism’: the taproot of all the worst evils of the 20th century- the Holocaust, the Gulag, up to the 9/11 attacks- is to be sought in the Jacobin ‘Reign of Terror’....

One should learn to step back, to disentangle oneself from the fascinating lure of this directly visible ‘subjective’ violence- violence performed by clearly identifiable agent. We need to perceive the contours of the background which generates such outbursts...

Taking into account this violence which is part of the normal functioning of global capitalism also compels us to throw a new light on its opposite, revolutionary terror...

In the strictest sense, every violence of the oppressed against the ruling class and it state is ultimately ‘defensive’...

Freedom is not something given; it is regained through a hard struggle in which one should be ready to risk everything...

True freedom overlaps with necessity; one makes a truly free decision when one’s choice put at stake one’s very existence-one does it because one simply ‘cannot do otherwise’...

As was made clear by Che Guevara, a revolutionary also has to be a ‘killing machine’...

Do not be afraid of its topic: the fear that prevents you from confronting it is the fear of freedom, of the price one has to pay for freedom.”

Slavoj Žižek
(from the foreword)

“Far from being the expression of a vindictive passion, the vengeance carried out appears above all of the exercise of a difficult change that was forced on the people by duty. One of the difficulties in executing it was precisely to distinguish the innocent from the guilty, to trace this dividing line- a question that constantly appears in the major reports of the period of Terror...

A triad of events in 1792 and a series of interpretations of these events in 1793 thus led up to the same decision, that of the founding of popular sovereignty by assuming what was then called the Terror- or said differently, the employment of the sovereign vengeance by the people...

The abyss of terror swallowed them up, rendering impossible such a work of political conflict as a conflict of sensibilities. After Thermidor, politics would no longer be the place of a division of sensibilities; it rather became the place of professional distribution of knowledge of the social art...

Establishing the Terror had the aim of preventing emotion from giving rise to dissolution or massacre, symbolizing would had not been done in September 1792 and thus reintroducing a regulatory function for the Assembly...

Classically, it is easier to open a cycle of vengeance than to close it, and this cycle can become quite protracted or even never close...

The construction of revolutionary values could thus merge with that of the emotional and moral wellsprings of the citizens as political actors. These wellsprings were no longer to be individual private virtue, but rather public virtue as socially manufactured for each person in a society finally constituted...

But representations of humanity are never universally shared, and the sentiment of ‘humanity’ is never natural...

The poor were not to disappear, they were to be honored. What was intolerable was not poverty, frugality, misfortune, but rather the indignity that the poor experienced...

What was hateful was not wealth as such, but it’s moral and political effects on those for processed it, and its moral, political and material effects on those who experienced oppression...

The first element in the tradition of natural right that we need to dwell on here is the one that makes it possible to understand on what condition the death of the enemy was necessary...

The revolutionary Terror, which is attacked for its revolutionary tribunal, its law of suspects and its guillotine, was a process welded to a regime of popular sovereignty in which the object was to conquer tyranny or die for liberty...

But no one was truly protected from a sacred transaction in which the foundation of values required the death of men, in which body and soul had to be committed, and anyone could perish from fear or be overcome by disgust. This in my view is the forgotten price of the Revolution, the burial price of the Terror- a price that is indissociably moral and political at once, and that lies in discomfort, risk and a gamble...

Revolutionary terror is not terrorism. To make a moral equivalency between the Revolution’s year II and September 2001 is historical and philosophical nonsense...

If the French Revolution can help in analyzing such events, this is perhaps in the connection between the public speech of the voiceless, the ‘understanding nothing’ of this speech by those who make politics, and certain events of cruelty...

The violence exercised on 11 September 2001 aimed at neither equality nor liberty. Nor did the preventative war announced by the president of the United States.”

Sophie Wahnich
In Defense of the Terror



“The abyss of terror swallowed the sensitivity that trembles almost exclusively for the enemies of liberty strikes me as suspect.”

Robespierre

[Reza Khabook · Rating 5 out of 5]

خواندن اين كتاب مستلزم دانستن نظريات آگامبن، فوكو و بسياري ديگر است بنابراين هرگز و هرگز بدون پيش زمينه و صرفا به واسطه اسم جالب و موضوع آن به سراغ اين كتاب نبايد رفت.

If you want to read it and understand it you need to know about Agamben’s ideas and a bit of Foucault. Without this basic and fundamental knowledge you will find this book meaningless.

[DeadWeight · Rating 2 out of 5]

I ultimately think Žižek winds up giving a more direct and more succinct "Defence of the Terror" in his introduction. By spending most of her time wading through abstraction, Wahnich winds up sending a lot of her time making the Terror seem like something one can only defend in roundabout, counter-intuitive forms -- you know, the sorts of bad-faith critical theory arguments you occasionally read in something like Foucault, where the point is plainly to provide a shocking and counter-intuitive argument rather than provide any real insight. Defences have been mounted more directly and more assuredly hundreds of years ago -- Mark Twain mounted one (also cited by Zizek in the intro), and Victor Hugo presented yet another: “Ah, there you go; ’93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial.” I'm not throwing Wahnich away entirely, but I do think her attempt would have been better carried out with more of a historical materialist analysis, especially as this doesn't do much imo to counter those with a more Burkean/Carlylean disposition. The Terror lives on as a symbol of the folly of revolutionary efforts; as Hobsbawm once pointed out, this same narrative neglects the sort of state terror which France enforced against the Paris Commune, which killed more people in far less time, and to my mind serves as one of countless defences of post-revolutionary repressive violence.

[Kevin Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quote [Bracketed words are mine]

‘Terrorism’ and ‘terrorists’ are words that originated with Thermidor. Those who sought to found a new and egalitarian political and symbolic space were defeated by history. The terrorists meant Robespierre and Saint-Just, but also all who fought for ‘liberty or death’ … The Terror would be the name given by history to this period of ‘terrorism’. The view of year II of the Republic as a period of terror and dread is essentially Thermidorian.
By inventing the neologism ‘terrorist’, the Thermidorians not only anthropologized a violence that was also seen as popular, but they actively obscured what had given this terror a situational legitimacy: a juridico-political process of collective responsibility. In fact, the duty of insurrection made each person a watchman who had either to rise up at the risk of his life, or take responsibility for the decisions of the national Convention[Article 2 of the rights of man posits ‘resistance to oppression’ as a sacred inalienable right]….From this point on, the ‘terrorists’ were the Other of the republicans. The most fervent of these, such as Victor Hugo – little suspected of counter-revolutionary ideology – constantly asserted that, even faced with a crime such as that of 2 December 1851[Napoleon III’s self coup to avoid term limit], they would never call for revolutionary terror.

[Jeremi Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

From Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, as quoted by Žižek in the foreword:

There were two 'Reigns of Terror' if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; . . . our shudders are all for the 'horrors' of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with life-long death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? . . . A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror
- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us have been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

Nothing more needs to be said.

A total of 1,376 people were put to death on the scaffold during the Terror, each after an individual trial by the Constituent Assembly, in a process that took 22 months. It takes the US law enforcement approximately 15 months to reach the same number, except those are all extrajudicial murders of course.

[Emma Flärdh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title and premise of this book made me very excited, because I have been looking for books about the french revolution and the terror that dare to go beyond the usual perspective of, as Wahnich calls it, ‘Robespierre alone in a forest of guillotines’. And the analysis of the terror was definitely interesting, as was the criticism of other thinkers and their understanding and use of the events.

The style and language, however, was very dense and a bit inaccessible. I do not normally struggle with heavily academic (or pretentious) texts, but in this case it sometimes took away from my enjoyment of the essays. It might be a fault of the translation, but at times the writing went from abstract to plain confusing.

Another thing that made the reading less pleasant; Wahnich constantly used the revolutionary calendar, and was inconsistent when it came to also giving the ‘modern’ dates. This made it hard to place the events referred to on a timeline, and I constantly had to look up the order of the months in the revolutionary calendar.

[Stephen Morrissey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most certainly a dense, philosophical take on the French Revolution, but if you can stomach the high falutin language and academic arguments, you will find a fascinating and important point: one man's terror may be another man's defense of liberty. In various ways, Wahnich demonstrates that the likes of Danton, Robespierre, and Saint-Just were defending a fragile republican experiment against all sorts of threats, internal and external. The Terror, as it has come to be known, may even have channeled violence into democratic, legitimate means, so Wahnich argues, limiting the breadth of destruction and violence and by far paling against the centuries-long horrors of the Ancien Regime.

We all crnge at the blood spilled by the guillotine, but do we focus too much on a few months at the expense of many years, decades, and centuries of violence? Wahnich's answer may not sync up with most historiography, but it is most certainly a fascinating read.

[Mason Wyss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weak book. Weaker conclusion. Makes me wish I had just read the speeches of Saint-Just and Robespierre because those were the points at which I was most interested and felt that the most was being said.

If one wants to defend terror, then certainly one must establish that its justifications are sound and that it is undertaken for good reason. Unfortunately, Wahnich is not interested in this. What were the pressures on the nation by war? How did killing the king cement republican government versus other means of disposing of him? Who exactly were the victims? Was the evidence presented against its victims sound? All basically irrelevant to Wahnich.

But, let’s grant that we want to talk about terrorism broadly using the setting of the French Revolution as a case study. Even still the conclusion feels tacked on and irrelevant. There are some contrasts drawn between the cases of 1793 and 2001, but they only offer the slightest insights into the War on Terror and French Revolution.

[Mynt Marsellus · Rating 5 out of 5]

The idea of defending anything resembling "terror" today seems antithetical, and yet Wahnich has done so for precisely the reason that the original "terrorists" of the French revolution, proclaimed as such by the Thermidorians, bear little resemblance to either the terrorists of Al-Qaeda or the American retaliatory terror still wreaking havoc across the middle east. She reads the events of the Terror as the public expression of having conquered sovereignty, as a justified thoughtful and considered expression of public violence that at the very least bears the morality of the intentional and recognized as opposed to the "letting die" of the biopolitical sovereign. This book is pithy in its theorizing and present a challenge for those of us town between Arendt and Fanon in our understandings of the necessity and legitimacy of violence.

[Bas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a short book with an intruiging premise but with a not very satisfying excecution. While written by a historian , the book is more written as an essay then a pure historical work. Which is fine but Wahnich has chosen for a very philosophical approach that I found both not very enjoyable to read and not very convincing. There are books out there that do a better job to putting the Terror in it's historical context. There were certain passages that were well done and I rather liked the overall point Wahnich makes here, just not really how we got there. Also the introduction by Zizek is something I guess... Somehow he seems to think that the French Revolution is an occasion to talk about Coriolanus in depth. I'm happy for him that he thinks that makes sense

[Armistead B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very dense academic book with lots of sections that can be difficult to parse on the first read. With a title like this, I would've hoped for an easier pamphlet sort of style. Still, this book is well argued and written, and I think it is a great piece of inspiration for all would be Jacobins. She argues that the Terror was an attempt by the Jacobins to harness and control popular emotion until Frances wars, civil and foreign, were complete. The jacobins, according to her, believed that when revolutionary passion died, so too di the revolution. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, died for the vanity of the French kings, was 20,000 killed in the terror really too high a price to prevent their return? Plenty to think about with this one.

[Rob Keenan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strap in les enfants, this is going to be a bumpy ride.
A great read. Definitely makes assumptions about prior knowledge of the French Rev but if you have it then wow what a blast. Wahnich does an excellent job using a wealth of philosophy both contemporary to the Revolution and more current ideas to flesh out an explanation of the Year II. The conclusion contrasts the equalising, foundational violence of "The Terror" with GW Bush's reactionary war after 9/11 (the book was released in French in 2003). Overall a wonderful read that does a lot to combat the image of "a solitary Robespierre among a forest of guillotines".

[Phil Schuler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really quite excited about the whole idea of this book but in the end it had failed to deliver. It starts with a convoluted forward and then the premise that The Terror actually created self-restraint. Even though I am not a French Revolution expert this was a bold and intriguing statement. I am not certain where she went wrong. Was it the translation? Reliance on some unconfirmed facts? Her roaming arguments? For the most part one could just read the conclusion and be done with it. In the end I have found that the author did not prove her thesis at all. I do not buy her conclusions. A disappointment to say the least.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

If my note taking is any indication, the most accessible part of this essay is definitely the back third. Some of the jargon falls away and gives room to more legible analysis.

The French Revolution, as embodied in the time before the counter-revolution after Robespierre, was about the affirmation of humanity, liberty, and justice. The Terror was a governance tool used to appease these sentiments, to "conquer tyranny or die for liberty", to constructively funnel the people's fears and need for vengeance through their elected body. We've had the story of the Revolution passed down as "incomprehensible and disastrous" because that was convenient, a cautionary tale for any would-be future revolutionaries, but it is ahistorical.