Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution: With a New Preface, 20th Anniversary Edition

by Lynn Hunt

When this book was published in 1984, it reframed the debate on the French Revolution, shifting the discussion from the Revolution's role in wider, extrinsic processes (such as modernization, capitalist development, and the rise of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes) to its central political significance: the discovery of the potential of political action to consciously transform society by molding character, culture, and social relations. In a new preface to this twentieth-anniversary edition, Hunt reconsiders her work in the light of the past twenty years' scholarship.

Genres: History, French Revolution, France, European History, Nonfiction, Politics, 18th Century

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Lynn Avery Hunt is the Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her area of expertise is the French Revolution, but she is also well known for her work in European cultural history on such topics as gender. Her 2007 work, Inventing Human Rights, has been heralded as the most comprehensive analysis of the history of human rights. She served as president of the American Historical Association in 2002.

Reviews

[Dasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution Lynn Hunt aims to revitalize the politics of the revolution after the Marxist, Tocqueville, and revisionist theorists analyzed and re-analyzed the French Revolution. Hunt looks to understand the patterns which underlie the emergence of the new political culture during the French Revolution. To do so, she focuses on the revolution's language, symbols, and rituals rather than focusing on the traditional social analysis of the Revolution's leading players and social classes. Hunt focuses on examining the Revolution as bringing about a new political culture, which provides an innovative analysis of the French Revolution.

[Steven Mclain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt, 2004. This is an intellectual examination of the process of revolution and Hunt is less interested in the origins and consequences of revolution; instead, she pursues a systematic discussion on the means by which revolutionary rhetoric propagates revolutionary themes. Distinctive from the traditional Tocquevillian or Marxist interpretation of the Revolution, which emphasizes origins in terms of mass or economy, Hunt's revisionism distinguishes the praxis of revolution itself.

She begins by dividing her book into two parts, the first of which looks at the role of poetics—that is, the rhetoric of power. The second she calls the sociology of politics. She devotes her first chapter to the rhetoric of politics, examining the role of revolutionary words in their context. She follows by analyzing the symbols of power, which she asserts mobilized the exercise of power. By the third chapter she has finished her argument with radical imagery, the dress and style of personal presentation used to create and identify with political movements. The fourth chapter begins the second division and deals primarily with identifying geographical distribution of politics. By distinguishing the geographical spread, she emphasizes the “center” of her cultural frame. (87) The emerging cultural class finally helps define her thesis, drawing upon sociological break-downs to demonstrate a radically different interpretation of the French Revolution than either Tocqueville or Marx could provide.

What differentiates Hunt from previous historical interpretations is her emphasis upon the emergence of a distinct political class within France. Their “[belief] that they could establish a new national community” identifies for Hunt a distinctly original hand-hold by which to grasp the Revolution. (213) The sources of that identity were the methods of rhetoric, imagery and symbolism used to divorce the Revolutionaries from the Ancien Regime. Thus for Hunt, the creation of a new national myth was not the unconscious desires of burgeoning public opinion, or the rise of the bourgeoisie but rather the conscious application of myth-making and narrative-creation to build an heretofore unprecedented experience. Acknowledging the role of Furet in revivifying the historiography of the French Revolution, Hunt is indebted to the work of Mona Ozouf and Maurice Agulhon who “[showed] that cultural manifestations were part and parcel of revolutionary politics.” (15)

Drawing on primary sources and utilizing the much-maligned numerical analysis, Hunt is nevertheless able to demonstrate the role of emerging social and political consciousness within Revolutionary France. Ably weaving dry statistics into a cohesive historical argument places her on an empirical level sometimes lacking in previous historical interpretations of the Revolution. Put another way, she can put her money where her mouth is. Where that approach fails, however, is her sometimes oblique references to rhetorical methods—what she calls the poetics of politics. Oftentimes as much art criticism as historiography, her conclusions lack the conviction of her sociological studies. Thus, when she says that “power came from the Nation . . . to 'have' power . . . meant to have . . . control . . . over the articulation and deployment of outward manifestations of the new nation,” one has the sense that much of her arguments follow the same pattern. She is attempting to wield power over Revolutionary interpretation through manipulating those same manifestations. Though well-researched and well-plotted, it nevertheless feels unwieldy. It would be helpful had Hunt allowed the words of the Revolutionaries themselves to make her argument for her, rather than drawing upon nebulous critiques of artistic expression.

Nonetheless, Hunt provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of how politics shapes society, and how the manifestations of society—its images, theater and spectacle—elaborate and articulate the demands of politics.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't believe people in the 80s didn't like the back half of this!

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Lynn Hunt argues for the centrality of the process of the French Revolution and its impact on politics and culture demonstrated by the formation of a new political society. Rather than focus on deterministic causes leading to revolution, Hunt investigates the development of a new political culture complete with its own language, symbols, images, and gestures. This is a book about the interplay of politics on culture and of society on politics. Hunt provides a complete overview of the historiography of the French Revolution in the introduction and throughout the work. The author comments that she relied on the work of three French historians who have pioneered in the study of revolutionary political culture and then asserts that politics can not be separated from culture. Primary sources are used throughout the work and discussions of other schools of interpretation are examined through the work of other important historians.

The book is divided into two parts, “the symbolic sources of unity” and “the social sources of coherence”. The first section discusses political symbolism as expressed through language, images, and gestures. Hunt contends that the political culture of the revolution was made of these symbolic practices; the repetition of key words and principles, the use of symbols like the Liberty Tree, as well as shared attitudes towards politics. She answers how society represented their political goals and finds that the revolutionary symbolism provided a unifying force for the French revolutionary society. In the second part, Hunt concentrates on the geography of the revolution and the similarities of the people involved in revolutionary politics. The author finds that the revolutionary rhetoric appealed to the same types of people who came to believe that political activism could change their everyday lives. Hunt concludes that the “chief accomplishment of the French Revolution was the institution of a dramatically new political culture”.

[David]

In the first section of her book, Hunt traces the changing iconography of the Revolution over the course of the revolutionary decade. Unlike the British or the Americans, the French rejected their history, and self-conciously sought to write a new script for politics, one whose essential outlines we follow to this day.
I found particularly interesting the story of the changing fortune of Marianne, the embodiment of freedom; in the first phases of the revolution, she was presented as active and armed, staring the viewer in the eyes. The Jacobins came to power and ditched the lady altogether, preferring to forgoe the more metaphorical representations of freedom in favor of explicit symbols of republican nationalism. In her place, they adopted Hercules in sans-culottes pants, strangling a weak, effeminate king. When Robespierre fell, liberty returned as a lady, but this time, seated, unarmed, staring off to the side. Through iconography, Hunt manages to make a convincing and interesting point about how the French essentially "created" a new sort of politics.
In the second section, she uses big data to craft her argument, and although she contextualizes it in a theory (one with which I disagree), I feel like the numbers are underbaked and presented in a haphazard way. Pretty unsatisfying.

[Jennifer Cutler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for grad school, but as I'm sitting here trying to formulate thoughts about Hunt's argument, I'm having a hard time working through her rhetoric... The irony isn't lost on me - she devotes a whole chapter to deciphering revolutionary rhetoric. I'm not sure I'd be able to use much of what I pulled from this with my students, but there were some studies that demonstrated the political aspect of revolution varied throughout the country as smaller cities and villages shifted political views and more of the lower bourgeois partook in politics. A very dense read, but it was beneficial to learn more about the symbols, festivals, and language of the Revolution. After discussing it in class, I do feel there were more takeaways in terms of how she represents 'culture' - it probably helped that many of peers felt like I did about the first half (more interesting) than the second.

[Flaneurzh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The immortal work of a young female historian in the 1980s, inheriting and surpassing Marx, Tocqueville, Fuller, Durkheim, Weber, and Foucault, absorbing the multiple nutrients of anthropology, historical philosophy, and literary theories such as Geertz, Hayden White, and the like. The author talks to Skocpol, but she can remain invincible with a relatively micro attitude. By copying 20000 words, I have become increasingly confused about the political culture of the Republic in which I live today, but I also have a wealth of new knowledge.

[Susan Webb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting and useful insights, but overly academic and sociology-oriented for my taste. In attempting to carve out what the author considers a more nuanced interpretation than Marxist or other approaches, she presents a jumbled picture marred by academic jargon.

[Armistead B · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that redefined the historiography of the French Revolution on release, adding a third perspective to the old marxist vs revisionist interpretations of the revolution. The second half study of voting records region by region is a fascinating study which really flips the usually beougouise vs sans coullete vs nobels script. Highly recommended to anyone who loves this period of French history and wants a deep dive into who really supported the revolution and the monarchists.

[Johan Persson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lynn Hunts studie av franska revolutionen betraktas idag som en klassiker. Innan Hunt hade de dominerande perspektiven på franska revolutionens historia varit marxistiska eller tillhört den "revisionistiska" tradition som kritiserade marxisterna. Hunts bok är i sin tur en kritik av alla de tidigare perspektiven. Hennes analys fokuserar inte på ekonomiska och sociala strukturer eller klasskampen så mycket som på den politiska sfären. En av hennes centrala teser är att franska revolutionens verkligt betydelsefulla historiska arv är just skapandet av den moderna politiska sfären. Hunts intresse för revolutionens retorik, kultur och symbolspråk måste ses som en del av den allmänna kulturella vändningen inom historieämnet.

Som den fyrkantiga marxist jag är tycker jag att Hunts bok utgör en intressant studie av det revolutionära Frankrikes överbyggnad och av borgarklassens strategier för att erövra statsapparaten. Jag är mer skeptisk till påståendena om att franska revolutionen skapade en "ny politisk klass" bestående av jurister, byråkrater och professionella politiker. Visserligen är det sant att en sådan grupp uppstod, och på nationell nivå tycks ha varit den ledande kraften i revolutionen. Men jag kan inte se dem som något annat än en del av borgarklassen, dess professionella statsadministratörer. Hunts kritik av marxismens syn på revolutionärernas klassbakgrund blir extra märklig med tanke på hennes data som visar att revolutionens lokala "kader" i hög utsträckning tillhörde borgarklassen i snäv bemärkelse, manufakturägare och handelsmän.

Trots vissa invändningar vill jag ändå rekommendera Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, With a New Preface som en intressant studie av ett revolutionärt samhälle och som en motvikt till alltför dogmatiska marxistiska försök att pressa in franska revolutionen i ett historiematerialistiskt schema.

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is Lynn Hunt’s reaction to an academy inundated with Marxist interpretations of the French Revolution. Hunt’s shifts focus from the social to the political, yet her monograph is hardly a step backward. She utilizes “new cultural history” to reexamine the emerging political culture of 1790s France. Hunt asserts that dominant structuralist theories of the era—including Modernization theorists and Marxists—have constructed nothing more than tautologies: they propose theories and then argue to prove the structures they created. Hunt’s does not outright reject these theories, but instead studies the French process of creating a new political culture. She argues that the French Revolution did not simply create new ideologies in European history, it actually created ideology itself. Faced with a sharp break with tradition, new political leaders had little precedent for their actions. What ensued was a search for traditions from which to build political rationales.

In their search to validate their own power, French citizens appropriated Enlightenment thinkers’ language as well as historic iconography. Words, symbols, and actions were loaded with meaning and power, if for no other reason than in the wake of Revolution the citizenry had little else to validate their experiment with democracy. Historic symbols, such as Liberty, provided a historical past that connected disparate revolutionary peoples. Of course these same citizens were obsessed with conspiracy, but Hunt argues they had good reason to be, as government by the people lacked the divine validation of Louis XVI. She concludes on a positive note, assessing that events such as the Terror were merely a temporary setback in what would stand as a new tradition of European democratic rule.

[Lindz · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Hunt’s book, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, appeared fresh off the press in 1984, it immediately set the tone for a post-revisionist movement in French Revolution historiography. Stepping away from the grand origins and outcomes arguments previously put forward by Marxist and Revisionist historians, Hunt embarked on a retelling of the French Revolution that explained how it birthed “revolutionary politics,” a new political class and specifically political culture. This birth of a new political class,“revolutionary politics” and political culture, for Hunt is the real legacy of the French Revolution. Split into two parts, “The Poetics of Power” and “The Sociology of Politics”, evidence ranging from rhetoric to gestures, fashion, symbols, and political actors and leanings are examined that help support her thesis that the Revolution was in fact the first instance in western history that a nation went through a political revolution where certain members became aware that they themselves can reconstruct society built around their new political ideals. Hunt incorporates social, political and cultural history for Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution. Brilliant and well researched, Hunt embraced other historian’s work and combining it with her own ideas and research that created a synthesized study that still is held in high regard to this day.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hunt skirts the edge of severely retarded postmodern analysis with this work on the rhetoric and symbols of the new political language created by the exigencies of the French Revolution. If only pushed a little further, her work could reach the level of inanity, as apparently she did in a work on gender and the FR which I found mocked in another historical work. However, she manages this tight-rope walk by sticking to the fact of the FR's adherents' clearly stated goal of a tabula rasa and the ways in which brand new ways of talking about politics came about. In an unrelated, but interesting half of the book, she looks at electoral rolls throughout France to show the wacky social and cultural divisions which only further illustrate how complex this whole goddamn mess is to look at. If you don't know anything about the FR, this book will be way over her head. If, however, you have erotic dreams about Robespierre and his hirsute ass, then this is the book for you!

[johnny dangerously · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly magnificent book for anyone interested in the cultural impact of the French Revolution, from its symbols to its psychology. Too many books on this period focus only on the political culture, ignoring the entire point of the political movement: the people, and the upheaval of their everyday lives. This book effortlessly links them, making clear the two currents are inextricable. Highly recommended for anyone interested in understanding this period of history.

[Shawn Stafford · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of this book poses a really thought provoking analysis on the French revolutionary culture which I found fascinating. While the second part is a really interesting analysis of primary sources, it really starts to turn into 100 pages of facts more so than the strong analysis of the first part.

[Sean Chick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not every part is interesting, but the overall argument about the importance of the democratic aspects of the Revolution and how politics changed is superb.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh - the politics of revolution as a Mobius loop... blah, blah. Hunt's a bit too po-mo for my tastes.

[Christopher Walls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another must read French Revolution Book.

[Jake Mcdonough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Points out some good parts and symbolism of the revolution that one might not seen before hand.