Article ID: CBB674263670

Tocqueville and the Consciousness of Capital (Reading The Ancien Régime with Lukács) (2020)

unapi

Since the 1970s, Alexis de Tocqueville’s The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution has provided an intellectual linchpin for revisionist accounts of the French Revolution as a political event, divorced from socioeconomic logics. This article offers an alternative reading of this classic text. It argues that Tocqueville’s analysis grapples at a fundamental level with social change and tries to grasp its manifestations in processes of bureaucratization and abstraction. Read alongside Georg Lukács’ seminal analysis of modern rationalization as reification, it offers a suggestive take on capitalist transformation in eighteenth and nineteenth-century France. I suggest that in our current historiographical conjuncture, Tocqueville’s analysis can serve as a point of departure to understanding how capitalism invests all spheres of life, both material and ideational.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB674263670/

Similar Citations

Article Oliver Cussen; (2020)
The Lives of Merchant Capital: The Frères Monneron and the Legacy of Old Regime Empire (/isis/citation/CBB587360844/)

Article Alexia Yates; Erika Vause; (2020)
Beyond the dual revolution: revisiting capitalism in modern France (/isis/citation/CBB280594674/)

Book Fahad Ahmad Bishara; (2017)
A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950 (/isis/citation/CBB581190849/)

Book Sabine Arnaud; (2015)
On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category Between 1670 and 1820 (/isis/citation/CBB986198630/)

Book Spary, E. C.; (2014)
Feeding France: New Sciences of Food, 1760--1815 (/isis/citation/CBB001552819/)

Book Lise Dumasy-Queffélec; Hélène Spengler; (2014)
Médecine, sciences de la vie et littérature en France et en Europe de la révolution à nos jours (/isis/citation/CBB263680135/)

Article Walker, Mark; (2009)
“Ideologically-Correct” Science: The French Revolution (/isis/citation/CBB001022197/)

Chapter Giovanni Silvano; (2020)
La macchina del soccorso nella Francia rivoluzionaria. Verso la laicizzazione della cura (/isis/citation/CBB233265226/)

Chapter Giovanni Silvano; (2020)
Una sfida per l’amministrazione di ospedali e ospizi a Parigi dopo l’89 (/isis/citation/CBB142493911/)

Book Goldstein, Jan; (2005)
The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750--1850 (/isis/citation/CBB000950616/)

Article Gissis, Snait; (2009)
Interactions between Social and Biological Thinking: The Case of Lamarck (/isis/citation/CBB000932272/)

Book Duyker, Edward; (2003)
Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755-1834) (/isis/citation/CBB000400039/)

Book Sean M. Quinlan; (2021)
Morbid Undercurrents: Medical Subcultures in Postrevolutionary France (/isis/citation/CBB109871340/)

Authors & Contributors
Silvano, Giovanni
Quinlan, Sean M.
Bishara, Fahad Ahmad
Lise Dumasy-Queffélec
Vause, Erika
Hélène Spengler
Concepts
French Revolution of 1789
Medicine and politics
Science and society
Medicine
Capitalism
Hospitals and clinics
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century
Modern
Enlightenment
17th century
Places
France
Paris (France)
Levant and Near East
Indian Ocean
North Africa
Great Britain
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment