Abstract

Crises and social revolts in the historiography of contemporary France Refusing to apprehend the category as a simple empirical fact, the article examine the notion of crisis against the perspective offered by the series of French Revolutions : . This enables the authors to question these « moments of crisis » in relation to the historiographical contribution of successive generations of historians. In opposition to a liberal vision where social revolts are devoid of any political project, such an approach on the part of the historian places the focus on a people, a proletariat, a group which, above all, reveals itself to be a political subject. To be effective, and to avoid stifling the comprehension of a revolutionary phenomenon, the concept of conjunctural crisis is thus combined with the invocation of a longer temporality and with a comprehension of the organic movements of society. The focus placed on the moment of crisis enables the authors to propose a different way of apprehending revolution, to grasp its rootedness in time that is both profound and immediate, organic and circumstantial