HISTORICKÁ SOCIOLOGIE
HISTORICKÁ SOCIOLOGIE

Interdisciplinary journal focusing primarily on sociological, political science and historical perspectives on the issue of long-term social processes and trends, modernization, globalization tendency and impacts.

The journal creates a broader platform for researches in the historical social sciences. Epistemological field is not strictly bounded, it is also meant to overlap with civilizationalism, cultural sociology and other related fields.

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Published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press, cooperated with Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague.

Reviewed scientific journal issued twice a year (in June and December).

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HISTORICKÁ SOCIOLOGIE, Vol 10 No 1 (2018), 47–70

Power and the French Revolution: Toward a Sociology of Sovereignty

Isaac Ariail Reed

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/23363525.2018.38
published online: 28. 06. 2018

abstract

In what sense was the French Revolution exceptional – a moment of potential liberation both unique and uncertain? “Exceptionality” has a specific meaning in political philosophy, and, using this meaning as a departure point, this paper develops a specifically sociological typology of states of exception – enunciative, reciprocal, and structural – grounded in a Hegelian sociology of power. The schema is useful for parsing and interpreting several of Robespierre’s most important speeches during the Revolution. This analysis leads to retheorization of modernity in the French Revolution, with specific attention to the interpretation, in Paris, of the revolution in Saint Domingue.

keywords: state of exception; Robespierre; Haitian revolution; sociology of revolutions; G. W. F. Hegel

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