Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.f1bxyi>
Abstract
The history of madness under the French Revolution has aroused a certain interest without necessarily finding a secure place in historiographic debates. Too often regarded as a body of research produced by historians of science or medicine, this field still remains ignored by specialists of the political and social history of the period, despite the success of some recent productions. The evolution of theories and therapeutic practices as well as the social and institutional transformations that characterize the milieu of alienists not only belong to the history of medicine, but are also part of the political developments of the era. If a political history of madness is possible only by taking into account political changes and ruptures, such an investigation must in turn illuminate the nature and scope of politics. If is from this perspective that the author’s attention was attracted by the Institution of Charenton and its director Francois-Simonet Coulmier (1741-1818), between 1797 and 1814. Examining, once again, the tumultuous history of this institution where the marquis de Sade and the song writer Theodore Desorgue were interned, the author discusses the political battles surrounding the subject of madness and considers their impact on the political heritage of the revolutionary ideal in the first decades of the nineteenth century.