Provocative reassessment of the Great Terror as a price worth paying
Sophie Wahnich is a historian based at the Laboratoire d'anthropologie des institutions et des organisations sociales in Paris. Her previous publications include L'impossible citoyen. L'étranger dans le discours de la Révolution française and La Longue patience du peuple: 1792, naissance de la République.
We were not waiting merely for a book like this; this is the book
we were waiting for.
*Slavoj Zizek, from the foreword*
Many of the participants in the French revolution thought long and
hard about such questions, and while it is sometimes difficult to
understand their thoughts, and not always comfortable to do so, it
is always interesting to go back into that perennial political
laboratory and try. Wahnich's provocative book is testament to
that.
*Guardian*
Our default position has become one of lazy dismissal: with all of
the blood and brutality, how could we, why would we, want to
consider the Terror as anything but a horror show? . Wahnich's
subversive reflection is that far from taking lives, the Terror was
actually about saving them.
*Jacobin*
Sophie Wahnich illuminates the origins of the French revolutionary
terror in an effort to help us to think clearly about the
relationships between revolution, violence and terror in
general.
*Times Education Supplement*
In Defence of the Terror is a provocative and compelling essay,
well written and impressively concise, with a good mix of
contemporary resonance and archival detail.
*Peter Hallward*
A bold and stimulating essay, seeking to understand the Terror
instead of ritual reprobation of its 'excesses.'
*Cahiers d’Histoire*
In this portable (5.5x8") study, Wahnich (the Laboratory of the
Anthropology of Institutions and Social Organizations, France) goes
against current historical interpretations of the Jacobin Terror of
the French Revolution when she says that the Terror was a precisely
planned and controlled attempt to prevent further violence by the
public. She also compares the French revolutionary Terror with
recent fundamentalist terrorism.
*Book News*
An intriguing take on modern social issues and history.
*The Midwest Book Review*
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