Le Goff, Philippe (2015) The militant politics of Auguste Blanqui. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Auguste Blanqui (1805-81) is arguably at once the most important and most overlooked revolutionary of the nineteenth century. This thesis aims to shed new light on Blanqui’s thought by examining his unpublished manuscripts and recent anthologies of his writings that have yet to receive sustained critical engagement. I contend that politics is the central category through which to read and interpret Blanqui’s entire project. To this end, I reconstruct what I take to be the fundamental elements of Blanqui’s politics, arguing that it remains rooted at every moment in his concept of ‘pensée-volonté’, or conscious volition. This groundwork provides a platform from which I advance my own readings as well as engaging with previous interpretations that, though stimulating and useful, nonetheless often remain limited because of their incomplete view of Blanqui’s overall body of work. More than previous studies, I seek to resituate Blanqui within the wider revolutionary tradition from which he has hitherto been largely excluded that begins with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and continues through Karl Marx to Che Guevara, showing the extent to which Blanqui advanced and developed the political assumptions of those who preceded him on the one hand, and anticipated the politics of those who succeeded him on the other. Unlike all previous studies, I read Blanqui with and through more recent political thought as a means to both better critically assess Blanqui and to explore in turn how he can contribute to contemporary theoretical discussions. I suggest that despite his limitations with regard to questions of popular consciousness and the contexts and conditions of political struggles, in many crucial respects Blanqui lucidly outlines some of the basic elements of collective political action in his time and our own, from the subjective requirements of political actors to the rejection of historical necessity.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DC France J Political Science > JC Political theory
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Blanqui, Louis Auguste, 1805-1881, Revolutionaries -- France -- History -- 19th century, Political violence -- France -- History -- 19th century
Official Date:	September 2015
Dates:	Date Event September 2015 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of French Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Hewlett, Nick
Extent:	323 leaves
Language:	eng

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