La Commune de Paris, ou la naissance de la laïcité d'émancipation?

Abstract

Politically and socially, a first laïque experience emerged in a concrete and unprecedented way and in a unique territorial and revolutionary space: the Commune de Paris, from 18 March to 28 May 1871, more than ten years before the Ferry and Goblet laws marked the first official legislative institutionalization of education. The Commune's original and radical emergence of laïcité, both academically and through the separation of Church and State decreed on 2 April 1871, in a common and inseparable movement, is often overlooked in studies that focused on the history of laïque education. This paper focuses on this unprecedented collective creative movement, and especially on its philosophical significance. It demonstrates how this new revolutionary school and republican space contribute precisely to an alternative conception of laïcité – a laïcité of emancipation, based on the struggle against all forms of clerical domination, that is called séparation. (In French)