French Intellectuals Against the Left

The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s
1. Auflage 2004
ISBN: 978-1-57181-427-2
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 2, 306 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 446 g

Reihe: Berghahn Monographs in French Studies

In the latter half of the 1970s, the French intellectual Left denounced communism, Marxism, and revolutionary politics through a critique of left-wing totalitarianism that paved the way for today's postmodern, liberal, and moderate republican political options. Contrary to the dominant understanding of the critique of totalitarianism as an abrupt rupture induced by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Christofferson argues that French anti-totalitarianism was the culmination of direct-democratic critiques of communism and revisions of the revolutionary project after 1956. The author's focus on the direct-democratic politics of French intellectuals offers an important alternative to recent histories that seek to explain the course of French intellectual politics by France's apparent lack of a liberal tradition.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Christofferson, Michael Scott

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. From Fellow-Traveling to Revisionism: The Fate of the Revolutionary Project, 1944-1974

Chapter 2. The Gulag as a Metaphor: The Politics of Reactions to Solzhenitsyn and The Gulag Archipelago

Chapter 3. Intellectuals and the Politics of the Union of the Left: The Birth of Antitotalitarianism

Chapter 4. Dissidence Celebrated: Intellectuals and Repression in Eastern Europe

Chapter 5. Antitotalitarianism Triumphant: The New Philosophers and Their Interlocutors

Chapter 6. Antitotalitarianism Against the Revolutionary Tradition: François Furet’s Revisionist History of the French Revolution

Epilogue and Conclusion

Selected Bibliography of Secondary Sources

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Christofferson, Michael Scott
Michael Scott Christofferson was educated at Carleton College and Columbia University. He currently is Assistant Professor of History at the Pennsylvania State University, Erie and lives in the Cleveland, Ohio.