BILIANA KASSABOVA, Lecturer, Stanford University

Date
Wed December 2nd 2015, 5:00 - 6:30pm
Event Sponsor
Seminar on Enlightenment and Revolution 1660–1830, a Stanford Humanities Center Research Workshop in Honor of John Bender
Location
Stanford Humanities Center, Boardroom

This talk argues that between ideals of representative government and of popular sovereignty, the French revolution enunciated a distinct third model of revolutionary leadership – that of the tribune of the people, a non-elected representative dedicated to popular sovereignty, who serves as a model, a teacher, a temporary leader of the plebs. I look at three case studies – de Bonneville’s idea of the tribune as publisher and an educator, the addition of dictatorship into tribunal thought by Marat, and Robespierre’s transformation of the tribunate into a function of revolutionary government. Coalesced into the revolutionary program of self-styled tribune of the people Gracchus Babeuf, these ideas would prove essential to later revolutions in France and beyond.