Accusing the State of Violence, in Life and in Death:
The years following 1789 had taught the radicals that they
could never have any long-term political success unless they established
themselves as a credible form of stable government. Establishing
political credibility, however, was no easy task for a movement that was largely
excluded from official channels of political expression – whether monarchical,
imperial, or republican. Nineteenth-century radicals faced the further
challenge of an instutionalization of state power (e.g., more precise censorship
laws, professionalization of police and military forces, systematic
surveillance, and anti-association laws.)
The tactic
of turning the accusation of violence on the state proved a highly effective
strategy both for defending the legitimacy of the radical movement, and for
claiming public platforms from which to express their political agenda. Not
only did this approach make it possible for the radicals to distance themselves
from violence and tarnish the reputation of the established regime, but it also
provided a frame for understanding revolutionary violence which painted their
past involvement as heroic rather than destructive.
Nicknamed “l’enfermé” (“the imprisoned one”)
for the long years he spent in jail, Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) came to
embody the accusation of state violence. State persecution of such prominent
radicals, however, was a double-edged sword. Over the course of the nineteenth century,
members of the radical opposition honed the skill of using the allegation of
state violence to transform the stand into a political platform. Protected by
the nature of courts as an institution, Blanqui drew large crowds to witness
the belligerent denunciations of the regime which he paraded as defense
speeches.
Blanqui
died in 1881, under the Third Republic, and 200,000 people are reported to have
turned out for his funeral. After a large procession across the city, his
service at Père-Lachaise cemetery was launched with a confrontational eulogy by
the anarchist Louise Michel (“His memory and his example are the arms that he
has left us to vanquish them!”). Drawing on the heated press debates surrounding
each of the commemorative ceremonies held for Blanqui, this paper concludes
with an examination of how the Left continued to invoke his memory as a means
of accusing the state of violence long after his death.