Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: French Anarchism in the Interwar Era: Decline or Renewal?
Part I: Anarchist Bodies
1. Gender and Political Violence: The Case of Germaine Berton
2. The Bad Father and the Prodigal Son: The Death of Philippe Daudet
3. Anarchism and the Avant-Garde
4. Utopian Bodies: Anarchist Sexual Politics
5. “Your Body Is Yours”: Anarchism, Birth Control, and Eugenics
Part II: French Anarchists Between East and West
6. Facing East: Russians and Jews
7. Facing West: American Heroes
8. Renegades
Epilogue: The Renewal of Anarchism
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Richard D. Sonn is Professor of History at the University of Arkansas. His previous books include Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin de Siècle France (1989).
“In sharp contrast to the anarchists of Spain, French anarchists
seem to have disappeared during the interwar period. Or did they?
In this compelling book, Richard Sonn examines fascinating, complex
cultural themes and takes us into the lives of figures such as
André Breton, Robert Desnos, Manuel Devaldès, and Eugène and Jeanne
Humbert as they confronted the aftermath of the Russian Revolution,
the rise of fascism, continued French depopulation, and the
politics of sexuality and of eugenics.”—John Merriman,Charles
Seymour Professor of History, Yale University, author of The
Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age
of Modern Terror and A History of Modern Europe Since the
Renaissance
“Sex, Violence, and the Avant-Garde is a fascinating work that will
make an important contribution to studies of anarchism, politics,
violence, immigration, and sexuality. Richard Sonn demonstrates
that the anarchists were not a fringe group but were visible and
significant in the arts, politics, and the causes célèbres of the
interwar period. Furthermore, Sonn provides a refreshing new look
at the relationship between gender and violence. Sonn’s breadth of
vision goes beyond French anarchism to include Russian and American
anarchists, analyzing their impact on their French cohort.”—Rachel
G. Fuchs,Arizona State University
“In this continuation of his study of French anarchism, Richard
Sonn demonstrates persuasively that anarchism as theory and
practice survived in some of its characteristic forms throughout
the 1920s and ‘30s and later provided a remote but genuine
inspiration for the radical and personal experiments of the 1960s.
His history is a series of lively portraits of the declining
fortunes or tragic failures of individual anarchists whose efforts
to reform or destabilize the social and political order ranged from
aesthetic experiments and eugenics to schemes for transforming
human sexuality and gender.”—Robert A. Nye,Oregon State
University
“I am aware of no fuller treatment of French interwar anarchism
than Richard Sonn’s Sex, Violence, and the Avant-Garde. In addition
to providing a rich examination of anarchism’s engagement with the
politics of sexuality and the body, it demonstrates how important
the movement was to surrealism as well.”—Christopher E. Forth,The
University of Kansas, author of The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis
of French Manhood
“Sex, Violence, and the Avant-Garde is an illuminating study, the
eclectic nature of which seems to reflect the individualism so
prevalent in the interwar anarchist movement and the personal
liberties its followers held dear.”—Robyn Roslak H-France Book
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