The exercise of comparison : thinking about the experience of the common since the Paris Commune (1871)

For a long time, the Paris uprising of 1871 - accompanied by revolts in other metropolitan and colonial cities - was seen as the first of the "modern" socialist revolutions, a singular urban event whose value lay in its spontaneity. This session aims to return to its meaning and scope, but from a completely different perspective. Firstly, by focusing on the notion of "experience" that gives the seminar its title. For this revolution rooted in the ^19th century, known as "modernity", it will be understood here as a temporal experience (i.e., the way in which history strikes the consciousness of those involved); as a sensitive experience (i.e., the way in which the event modifies the symbolic, affectual and sensory environment); and finally, in the sense of social and political experimentation, it being understood that these three dimensions are inseparable. We will proceed by cross-referencing with other experiences - revolt or elaboration of alternative social orders - on one or more of these aspects. At the same time, we'll be undertaking a comparative exercise to identify temporal distances, the effects of long duration or the proximity of situations of crisis or revolution. But we'll also look at how the Communards situated themselves in history, mobilizing the past and its potential to give meaning to their action, and how the Commune in turn became a reference loaded with promise for other times and places.

Finally, we'll look at the problem of the translatability of revolutionary historical experiences, which often appear irreducible. In this way, we will relate the Commune of 1871 to the Italian cities of the ^16th century, the Paris Commune of 1792, and, from a more anthropological perspective, to the forms of "alter-politics" observable in the contemporary world, in perspective with the reflections of the philosopher Antonio Gramsci. While confronting the classic but daunting problems of homology and singularity, discontinuity and repetition, we will attempt to reflect collectively on what happened during the Paris Commune, on the rupture in the order of meaning that it provoked, and on the intersecting interpretations that can be made of it today. In other words, a way of revisiting the "common" aspect of the Commune.