Speaking the Nation: Radical Republicans and the Failure of Political Communication in 1848

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Few of Marx's summary evaluations have been as successful as his dismissal of the revolution of February 1848 as only words.1 His aphorism characterizing the February revolution as a farcical reenactment of the Great French Revolution has acquired the status of a cliche and even historians such as Maurice Agulhon, who consciously distance themselves from Marx's explanatory categories, reproduce his attitudes to the February revolutionaries and their ideas. Historians of the first French Revolution, on the other hand, have been fascinated by the power of words for some time. Twenty years of work has demonstrated to us the ways in which social and political power was inscribed in language, how any claim to authority had to be linguistically represented.2 If anything, words took on a new importance in revolution as institutions, such as the monarchy, lost their legitimacy. Rhetoric revealed the nature of revolution: it was of its essence. In the light of this perspective on the relationship between revolution and language, Marx's view cries out to be understood differently and revised. His rejection of the February revolution as an illusion was itself a rhetorical strategy and could be nothing other, made, as it was, in the revolution itself.3 Asserting the vital connection between political rhetoric and politi-