We kicked off the new year with a return to ideas of political ‘space’. This came by way of the sometimes unusual fantasies of late 19th century French left-wing authors. Fortunately, we had Alex Paulin-Booth (Université Libre de Bruxelles) on hand to decode the meanings and implications of this utopian and dystopian thinking. Anita Klinger sends this report or you can listen again by following the Audiomack link below or subscribing to our podcast channel (on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts).
Alex’s research is concerned with ideas of time; in particular, she examines experiences and understandings of time and their effect on political activism. In her paper, she focused on the radical French left around 1900 and spoke about how their ideas about time shaped their politics. Notions of time, she argued, became particularly bound up with the questions of the day. As the possibility of a revolution became less certain after the Paris Commune, it provided the left with new, alternative discursive and political spaces to think about possible futures.
Her two main strands of investigation for the paper were, on the one hand, futurist novels and, on the other, the discourse around evolutionary theory, both of which were experiencing a boom around 1900. Through these sources, Alex argued, historians were able to examine how the/a future might have been conceived of by political activists, allowing us to enter into their mind-sets, while also providing us with a history of “how people got things wrong”.
Following an illuminating summary of the limited historiography surrounding the study of time, Alex began by laying out a major concern on the French left around 1900. She spoke of the criticism of Marxism as taking away agency from the proletariat by insisting on “waiting around” for the revolution to come, rather than focusing on concrete, reformist steps which could be taken towards the betterment of society. As concrete discussion of the future was side-lined in political activism, Alex argued that it was displaced into the realm of literature. By way of example, she talked about four turn-of-the-century French novels in some more detail. They were Maurice Spronck’s L’an 330 de la République (1894); Eugène Fournière’s Chez nos petits fils (1900); Daniel Halévy’s Histoire des quatre ans (1903); and Anatole France’s Sur la pierre blanche (1905). Though all four quite different, Alex identified a few themes which these utopian and/or dystopian stories had in common.
One prominent theme was technological development and the anxiety which the new pace of change induced in contemporaries. Though this anxiety had been mounting since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, Alex argued that especially evolutionary theory and science had placed all of humanity on a new and vast plane of time, heightening this anxiety even further. Another theme which some of the authors were particularly ambiguous about was the future of work, and the prospect of worklessness. While technological advances would likely reduce working hours, there were serious concerns about not losing control of time altogether and needing to balance the new spare time with some structure to prevent, as Halévy envisioned it, a society plagued by drug use and alcoholism, now that work was not central to the structure of society any more.
A third theme was that of the unity of European nations under some form of federalist structure. This unity, in Maurice Spronck’s imagining, had made redundant the need for any European armies and thus exposed the continent to great threats, particularly from ‘the East’ and North Africa. The utopia, therefore, revealed itself as more of a dystopia after all, at least to Spronck, who, notably, was the only one of the four authors who was on the political right, rather than on the left.
Curiously, Alex noted, these novels all imagined a future, but once the future was arrived at – often through the heavy-handed literary device of having the protagonist transported there in his sleep – the imagined future proved static. The authors rarely explained how the future societies they had imagined had actually been brought about, presenting a future that was ‘cut off’ from the present with no plan of how to get there.
Towards the end of her paper, Alex went on to speak more about the ‘cult’, or ‘religion’ of science which became increasingly popular around 1900. Science promised progress, based on actual evidence, and evolutionary theory in particular was one such way of progressing. It allowed people to conceive of mankind as a living organism which followed the newly-popularised (and immediately bastardised) theory of evolution. In this way, a scenario in which people would fall out of step with the accelerated pace of change could hopefully be avoided entirely.
However, as Alex emphasised, while these (ab)uses of science may have served as a useful ‘shorthand’, they were more often than not lacking a deep understanding of the actual science behind them. Alex concluded that, overall, the French left around 1900 tried to use science, and especially ideas of time, to safeguard their revolutionary goals while also defending itself against the accusation of uselessly dreaming rather than engaging in meaningful reformist change in the present.
In his comment, Emile Chabal (Edinburgh) reminded the audience that thinking about time was central to the way we understand politics, and therefore a very appealing subject. By including one author from the political right, Emile posited, Alex had made us think especially about what was interesting or perhaps unique about the left at this point in time. In his view, the left was in a state of failure, and therefore in particular need of utopias, where – even though the process was left unclear – the endpoint at least was not.
Emile also raised the point of work and labour. How far had the four novels Alex presented posed the question of the future of work and how should the left position itself as technology may be making work, and workers, ever less central to societies and identities? He furthermore suggested that a political compass might be imagined which did not span from left to right, but from the past (traditionally the focus of more conservative politics), via the present (with which liberalism was most concerned) to the future (which was the remit of the revolutionary left, and right). Lastly, Emile wondered what it might mean for our conceptualisations of time and politics that the current generation in the Western world did not necessarily envision a better future for themselves, while vast populations for example in Asia were still full of utopian dreams and aspirations.
The seminar ended with a lively question and answer session, which touched on a diverse range of topics, including the significance of the French empire; the role of the revolutionary right; notions of constant crises on the left; the place of gender in the utopias imagined by the four authors; and the effects of the Russian Revolution and the First World War on ideas of time.
Anita Klingler is a PhD student in History. Her research interests lie broadly in twentieth century European history, political and colonial violence, and coming to terms with a violent past. Her thesis compares attitudes towards political violence in interwar Britain and Germany. She is a CSMCH steering committee member.