Camil Roman has written a captivating account of the French Revolution, which he convincingly presents as the central problem of political modernity. Discarding common interpretations in terms of progress, modernization, or Enlightenment rationalism, Roman reads the revolution as an existential void, which uprooted human beings, confused elites, empowered irrational forces, turned magic and utopian expectations into pillars of life, and made the limitless the central condition of modern democracy. This extremely thoughtful tour de force confronts the reader with the revolutionary vortex of destruction that annihilated not only old institutions, traditional values, and spiritual forms of power but also transformed the sacred and made the liminal void the essence of modern politics. This is political anthropology of the highest calibre, pivoting on rich historical analysis, lucid philosophical and sharp political judgement. - Harald Wydra, Professor of Politics and Philpott Fellow, St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge
The title of this book should not be taken lightly, as it indicates that something truly extraordinary is attempted, and accomplished, inside; what many no doubt consider as lying beyond possibility: this book contains something genuinely new and truly important about the French Revolution and modern democracy at the same time. They who think this is not possible should read the book from cover to cover and will change their mind. Just as everybody else. In order to make its points Camil Romans book deploys central concepts of Political Anthropology, especially liminality and trickster, but also imitation and schismogenesis, in a highly innovative manner, arguing that modern democratic politics is not so much about political representation, as the representation of representation. The interpretation offered in the last two chapters on the death and especially the character of Louis XVI is just the icing on the cake. The expression by now has become all but meaningless but in this case applies with force: it is a must read. - Arpad Szakolczai, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University College Cork, Ireland
Camil Romans monograph is the first book in this series that offers a historical case study of the French Revolution, making use of key terms of political anthropology like liminality, trickster, void, or transformation. The perceptive and firm explorations of political anthropological approaches demonstrate how it is the French Revolution itself that has not only accelerated the collapse of politics, but voided meaningful experiences in relation to politics. While an erudite discussion, it manages to make its reading and understanding easy. The French Revolution and Its Legacy: Leaping Democracy into the Unlimited is highly recommended. - Agnes Horvath, PhD, President of the International Political Anthropology Association
This book offers a novel and intriguing interpretation of the single-most emblematic event in modern Western history, the French Revolution. Raising the stakes even further, it brings the problematic and liminal nature of modern democracy itself into a new perspective. No reader will be left unaffected. Inviting for a necessary rethinking of established assumptions connected to revolutions and modern democratic politics, this book will be of interest to scholars working across political and social sciences and to historians of the modern period. It deserves as wide an audience as its scholarship is deep. - Bjųrn Thomassen, Professor in Global Political Sociology, Roskilde University, Denmark
Camil Roman's The French Revolution and Its Legacy: Leaping Democracy into the Unlimited is a rare book. It offers an incisive political anthropology of the French Revolution, foregrounding the public execution of King Louis XVI of France on January 21st, 1793, which consummated the modern democratic revolution and inaugurated the Terror, and which has reverberated down to our moment and reverberates still. For Roman, the Revolution is characterized by the sacralization of the liminal void and flux of the representation of representation, the living source of our contemporary estrangement from the world and the divine. This sacralization was ritually bound up with the trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity which made possible the blood sacrifice of Frances last Christian king. Through penetrating symbolic analyses of the Tennis Court Oath event, Davids unfinished painting The Tennis Court Oath, and the tragicomic episodes leading up to the killing of the King, including a parallel account illuminating Louis XVIs own Christian response to his fate, Roman defamiliarizes these well-known events. According to Roman, the revolutionary past is not prologue but a continuing present, and so too that sacralized estrangement caused by our fateful embrace of revolutionary metamorphosis. The book will be of interest to students of the French Revolution, political anthropology, political modernity, and political theory, but even more, perhaps, to those who sense the hollowness at the center of our world of unceasing motion. - Seth N. Jaffe, Associate Professor (Research) of the History of Political Thought, LUISS Guido Carli University
