Politics Program and Dean of the College Present
“Regicide and Redemptive Violence in the French Revolution”
6:15 pm EST/GMT-5
Kevin Duong
Cornell University, Department of Government
The trial and execution of Louis XVI served as a founding act of French republican democracy. It was also a scene of irregular justice: no legal warrants or procedural precedents existed for bringing a king to justice before the law. In this talk, I describe how Jacobins crafted a new language of popular agency to overcome that obstacle—the language of redemptive violence. Although redemptive violence had roots in prerevolutionary notions of penal justice and social cohesion, its philosophical ambitions were revolutionary and modern. Analyzing that language illuminates how republican democracy became dependent on a distinctive ideology of extralegal violence at its origins. It also helps explain French republicanism’s enduring hostility to constitutionalism.
For more information, call 845-758-7230, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 6:15 pm EST/GMT-5
Location: Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium