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An interview is presented in which the authors discuss Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, a military and political leader during the French Revolution. Topics of discussion include the French Revolution, French lawyer and politician Maximilien Robespierre, and the Reign of Terror. Historiography and the construction of the memory of Saint-Just are also mentioned.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, new studies have enriched and widened our understanding of the concept of politicisation in the French rural world. The first historiographic breakthrough was achieved by no longer regarding peasants as an apolitical and apathetic mass which the political elite had to politicise. On the contrary, analysing what politicians said about peasants clearly reveals the former's incapability of grasping the latter's political aspirations. There is also a growing awareness of political impulses in rural areas. Some French historians are now more interested in the informal or apparently apolitical dimension of politics to the extent that some of them have even talked of the people's allegedly a-temporal politics. Other historians attempt to redefine the institutional space and its practices in the rural world: e.g. learning how to vote or how to be a citizen - and its corollary, political sociability. Finally, the role played by emotions and memory, notably the return of the repressed and the resurgence of memory which brought about antagonistic political cultures within the peasantry, have been reconsidered. The other historiographic breakthrough results from the methodological prudence of a new generation of historians, who are anxious to no longer view the peasantry as an 'object-class' (P. Bourdieu) but rather try to deconstruct it. Sharply contrasting geopolitical attitudes in the rural world and a new way of examining temporal processes have emerged thanks to their work: No political process is any longer held to have been linear and teleological in the peasant world (political reclassifications were constantly occurring from 1789 to 1848). Consequently, the peasant community is also reconsidered and dissected. Its alleged unanimity has been questioned and greater attention is now being paid to centrifugal forces which led to divisions and even sometimes implosion. This implies focusing more on the political individuation of peasants and on the way collective and personal strategies as well as formal and informal political processes were articulated and how local and national forces interacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses politics and government in the region of Aisne, France, a northern department, during the French Revolution, with a focus on local powers in the department from 1791 to 1795. Topics include the historiography and the methodology for researching collective behavior; the social and political processes between the state and the nation; and the interaction between central authorities and civilians. Changes to the social system of political administration are examined in the context of the French Revolution.

The article discusses the social aspects of the politicization of the peasant class in 18th century France and its relation to the French Revolution. The article describes the social dynamics in the family relationships of rural communities, the social interplay in the political relationship between government institutions such as the department and the commune, and the construction of a collective identity emphasizing the plight of the rural peasant. Other subjects under discussion include the relationship between the individual and the community, the historiography of historian Georges Lefebvre, and rioting in peasant communities.