Farewell, Revolution : disputed legacies : France, 1789/1989

The interpretation of the French Revolution has long been the most contentious issue in French history. This fascinating account of the controversies surrounding the Revolution's 200th anniversary will be indispensable for all who wish to understand both France's future and its past. In 1993, Editions Fayard published Steven Laurence Kaplan's controversial history of the bicentennial commemoration of the French Revolution. Here available in English is one of the most polemical parts of that work, Kaplan's account of the contemporary debates over the meaning of the Revolution. Farewell, Revolution: The Historians' Feud, France, 1789/1989 traces the impact of the historians' bitter quarrel, from Parisian academic circles to the public arenas of the bicentennial celebration. In the complementary work, Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies, France, 1789/1989, Kaplan chronicles both the ceremonies and the controversies that marked the bicentennial. The present volume considers in intimate detail the roles played in those arguments by three of France's most influential historians: Francois Furet, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel Vovelle. The apparent "king" of the bicentennial, Furet attempted to set and enforce the terms of the debate. Chaunu was the prominent spokesman of those who condemned the Revolution as the wellspring of all that is decadent in modern French culture. While officially entrusted with overseeing the historical accuracy of the commemoration, Vovelle attempted to rally a broad-based coalition against Chaunu and the conservatives. As he reenacts the feud, Kaplan invites a reassessment of the relationship between the writing of history and the practice of politics. His book suggests that the charged relationship between history and politics that enlivened the bicentennial may be the Revolution's most enduring legacy. Contents Acknowledgments General Introduction 1. Commemoration: Aporias, Dilemmas, and Opportunities 2. Resurgent Counterrevolutionaries and New Age Antirevolutionaries 3. Velvet Dreams and Satanic Nightmares: The Range of Bicentennial Rejectionism 4. The Vendee: Trope and Idee-Force 5. The Church 6. The Presidential Mode of Commemoration 7. The Political Parties: Managing Memory in the Microcosm and the Macrocosm 1. Toward a Bicentennial Project: From the World's Fair to the Grand Orient 2. A Man for All Seasons: Edgar Faure as Bicentennial Missionary 3. Aile Guten Dinge Sind Drei: Jean-Noel Jeanneney and the Mission Impossible 4. The Opening of the Bicentennial Season 5. Preparing the Climax: From Jungle Fever to Summit Fever 6. Goude's Opera: The Marseillaise Revisited 7. Anticlimax, Zenith, and Finale 1. Mobilization for Commemoration 2. Poitiers and the Poitou-Charentes: A Descent into Ia France Profonde 3. The Bicentennial from Below: In the Communist Penumbra 4. Paris: Bicentennial Accommodation and Resistance 5. The Bicentennial Destiny of Robespierre Farewell Notes Index The interpretation of the French Revolution has long been the most contentious issue in French history. How the Revolution should be remembered has been the focus of debates concerned as much with France's future as with its past. Kaplan both reviews these debates and reconstructs - in sometimes hilarious detail - events leading up to the official commemoration. Bringing to bear the skills of the archival historian and the ethnographer, he masterfully explains how a particular political culture attempts to come to terms with its past. As he sketches a provocative picture of politics in France today, he has much to say about more general relationships between memory and collective identity, history and politics. Farewell, Revolution is based on massive research, including interviews with leading players on the French cultural and political scene. Kaplan vividly describes the evolution not only of the bicentennial celebration in Paris but also of regional festivities and commemorative activities among the French Communists.