Banni soit qui mal y pense : l’histoire en exil. Le cas Quinet

• Main Author: Laure Lévêque
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université du Sud Toulon-Var 2014-01-01
• Series: Babel : Littératures Plurielles
• Subjects: commitment; education; exile; democracy; history of ideas
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/babel/3734

Taking Edgar Quinet’s experience and influence as a case in point, this paper considers the strategies of circumvention employed by necessity in order for an exiled figure to continue to nourish the circulation of ideas and to mark the intellectual developments of his times. Deprived of the audience with which his title as Professor at the Collège de France should have endowed him, Quinet gained what might be termed a ‘virtual chair’ by continuing to make himself heard through his works and via his disciples (in many cases his former students), ensuring that the words of the master were spread across Europe and beyond. Indeed, Quinet’s ideas were taken up in the context of fights for democracy in South America, evidence that the decentring that comes with exile does not preclude a recentring - when such an experience forms the basis for the constitution of an international community of resistance, developing as a network.