Anarcho-syndicalists Havre, slate Tr?laz?, convicts Guyana, Glovers Saint-Junien,
individualistic Brussels charged with Lyon, postmen Paris-Brune ... We find everyone in
the Biographical Dictionary of the French libertarian movement published on May 1. But in
fact, what is such a tool? ---- It took a total of eight years of exciting cooperative and
voluntary work to achieve, but it's done: for 50 years, the monumental collection of
biographical dictionary of the French labor movement - aka "the Maitron" name of its
founder - has just added a new album, dedicated to anarchists. ---- Frown for a moment.
That lovers of hagiographies and Epinal images go their way. It is indeed a work of
history, with all that it can be irreverent and even iconoclastic. If activists and
militants are studied, it is not to braid their laurel wreaths; is first to understand
their time. Quantitative analysis - called prosopographic - records may well uncover
generational phenomena, periods, breaks or continuities.
This scientific concern is well established, we are relaxing and recognize good faith
first appeal of such a work: high color portraits are not lacking, and we will follow with
passion many characters in their adventures, through strikes, meetings, the setting-up of
newspapers, unions, major controversies, but also frank friendships and rivalries
treacherous, cookies, repression, exile, prison.
Texts network
In this book, all texts are more or less in the network. We can thus travel from character
to character, caught in the collective narrative that draft. The layman familiar with the
big names may begin by Ravachol but led to another, he finds himself quickly alongside
Malato exile in London, Charles Ridel on the Aragon front, Emile Pouget the CGT, or
Fernand Doukhan in Algeria insurgent. This intertextuality help itself, to situate the
characters in context. This is also the purpose of the historic introduction of the
dictionary, which takes the form of a dense timeline commentary and a few notions (where
individualism is? Where does the black flag? When was the anarcho-syndicalism? Where does
the red and black flag? etc..).
In the printed dictionary, there is a selection of 500 biographies. The idea of adding a
CD-Rom was abandoned almost 3,000 notices were directly paid Maitron e-(
http://maitron-en-ligne.univ-paris1.fr ), which will available to purchasers of the
volume. There and find the extended versions of some records that the paper could not
digest. Someone like Louis Lecoin, who has had several successive lives activists, has a
synthetic notice in the paper version, but three times longer and more detailed on the web.
Hundreds of entries are entirely new, including several dozen for the period 1945-1981.
Those who would dig the recent history of libertarian communist current example have at
their disposal a panel illustrating what were the FA 1945, FCL, ORA, OCL and UTCL.
Beyond national borders
The field investigation was of course limited in space and time. Y come all persons who
had, before 1981, a notable activity in the French anarchist movement in France, Belgium,
Switzerland, North Africa and North America. Russian immigrants, Italian, Spanish,
Chinese, Bulgarian and others have their place when they acted in this space in
conjunction with the Aboriginal anarchist movement - which is far from always the case,
especially for Spanish. This transnational dimension is a wealth dictionary.
In this regard, even forcing an open door, we must emphasize the critical importance of a
tool not available to historians Jean Maitron generation, which is now happening peinerait
Internet. On the one hand because it made possible a truly collective work of the
editorial board, with an online collaborative tool. On the other hand, because the
increasing digitization of archives - Vital files convicts, through the collections of the
BNF on Gallica.fr - has sources within the reach of many, releasing flood of new
information, accelerating research, facilitates audits and overlaps.
What about activists?
"In the theater of memory" women are "light shadow" constataient Georges Duby and Michelle
Perrot in their History of Women in the West. Knowing this, we have redoubled vigilance in
investigations as in writing. A woman is no longer the "master" - vocabulary from police
reports - a militant, but his companion. Couples and activists are no longer subject to a
single record: now women have their own biography. Many activists have been drawn from
oblivion, without a miracle so far. They are the bare minimum, for the usual reasons:
lower public engagement, scarcity of police and journalistic sources, self-effacing ...
Cooperative work has a certain harmonization overlapping information, creating references,
eliminating contradictions. There are now several clusters of consistent records,
complementing each other - the anarcho-syndicalists of the building; those of Havre;
Italian refugees from Between the two world wars; anarchists du Gard; Var; Ardennes;
Finist?re; Belgium; Switzerland; individualists; emigrants to the United States; those of
the trial of Trent; the trial of those Sixty-six; the Bonnot gang; FCA; Black and Red ...
Finally, remember one important thing: while providing a leap forward for the
historiography of anarchism French language, this dictionary can not claim to be
exhaustive. Huge repositories of information remain to be explored, particularly in the
departmental archives. This dictionary should be understood as a work-in-progress that
aspires to be more broadly participatory. It is in any case a great tool for future research.
Guillaume Davranche (AL Montreuil)
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