Foreign Rights

In December 1871, the Academy of Medicine described the Commune as a « monstrous bout of acute alcoholism ». At the end of the 19th century, the reactionary discourse clothed itself in scientific attire, amalgamating proletariat, socialism, and religion to form a repugnant allegory of revolution. This book proceeds from a meticulous archaeology of the myth of the communards’ drunkenness conveyed in reactionary and medical discourse. It then describes how, in the aftermath of the insurrection, Hygienism took on a real sanitary mission against the « scourge of alcohol » from which the dangerous classes had to be diverted in order to regenerate the nation. At the heart of this worldview, there is the obsession with degeneracy, which prepares the ground for eugenics, and will leave, against all odds, its traces even in anarcho-individualism and neo-Malthusianism.