Patrie, peuple, amitiƩ: Sand and Michelet on the Politics of Friendship
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In his 1846 study of the People, Jules Michelet championed the peasant as the beating heart of the French nation. His libidinal attachment to a particular place, indeed to a particular soil, encapsulated the fundamental ties that tethered an entire people to their land: ācette terre, oĆ¹ lāhomme a si longtemps dĆ©posĆ© le meilleur de lāhomme, son suc et sa substance, [ā¦] il lāaime comme une personneā (1974: 84). To describe this territorial devotion, Michelet deploys different metaphors: the land is variously mistress and wife, in a kind of ālĆ©gitime mariageā (80). But where Michelet seeks to characterise the ties between French citizens, it is instead the epithet of friendship that best appeals to the historianās imagination: āCāest une grande gloire pour nos vieilles communes de France, dāavoir trouvĆ© les premiĆØres le vrai nom de la patrie. Dans leur simplicitĆ© pleine de sens et de profondeur, elles lāappelaient lāAmitiĆ©ā (199). Patriotism, Michelet glosses, is rooted in individual bonds of friendship; and these are not only contracted within the nation, but also underwrite what he calls āla grande amitiĆ©ā ā a kind of supra-friendship, whereby āLāami devient tout un peupleā.
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2688-5220