Máire Cross (SML): Remembering and Forgetting. Flora Tristan's biographer
School of Modern Languages Research Seminar Series
Location: School of Modern Languages, Old Library Building, Research Beehive 2.22
Time/Date: 15th December 2011, 16:00 - 17:00
Although a relatively minor figure to emerge from nearly two centuries of an intricate history of French activism, Flora Tristan (1803–1844) is an original thinker noteworthy for her outstanding synthesis of feminism and socialism that still has resonance. For scholars and activists alike, Jules-Louis Puech has been an indispensable source. My paper looks at how Puech gained his expertise: he deserves more recognition for his life’s work that encapsulates the diversity, richness and tensions of socialism and feminism in French History. Puech’s biography contains unique insight into a complex relationship of feminism and socialism in labour history in the first half of the twentieth century, a vexed question that remains problematic to this day. A closer look at Puech is long overdue and vital for development of our knowledge of both Flora Tristan and Puech because he is of equal interest as a historical figure and actor in a neglected side to the historiography of reformist socialism.
Image: Máire Cross visiting the grave of Jules-Louis Puech at the Cimetière Protestant de Castres
Published: 26th September 2011