Guest Post: Was Communard Louise Michel a vegetarian?

Was Communard Louise Michel a vegetarian?
By Jon Hochschartner
[This is a guest post. If you are interested in writing a guest post, please email me at james.stanescu@gmail.com]

Since I'm interested in both socialism and animal rights, historical figures who managed to reconcile the two ideologies fascinate and inspire me. That's why I find the question of whether the French communard Louise Michel was a vegetarian so interesting.

During the Paris Commune of 1871, she served the working-class uprising as an ambulance worker and militia member. When the rebellion was overrun, Michel was captured and tried. She dared the court to execute her, but ultimately was imprisoned in France for almost two years before being deported.

In her memoirs, Michel wrote that she traced her progressive politics to animal-protectionist feeling. "As far back as I can remember, the origin of my revolt against the powerful was my horror at the tortures inflicted on animals," she said. "I used to wish animals could get revenge, that the dog could bite the man who was mercilessly beating him, that the horse bleeding under the whip could throw off the man tormenting him."

She wrote that from an early age she rescued animals and that habit continued into adulthood. "I was accused of allowing my concern for animals to outweigh the problems of humans at the Perronnnet barricade at Neuilly during the Commune, when I ran to help a cat in peril," she said. "The unfortunate beast was crouched in a corner that was being scoured by shells, and it was crying out."

Michel believed there was a link between the subjugation of animals and the subjugation of humans. "The more ferocious a man is toward animals," she wrote, "the more that man cringes before the people who dominate him." In fact, she credited her opposition to the death penalty to witnessing the slaughter of an animal as a child.

She raged against vivisection, writing, "All this useless suffering perpetrated in the name of science must end. It is as barren as the blood of the little children whose throats were cut by Gilles de Retz and other madmen."

According to the International Vegetarian Union website, one Louise Michel attended the 1890 International Vegetarian Congress in England. The report of the meeting states she "expressed her views on Vegetarianism. The eating of flesh meant misery to the animals, and she held that it was impossible for men to be happy while animals were miserable."

And yet, search her memoirs for the term 'vegetarian' and you will find nothing. As a very young child, Michel was traumatized by the sight of a decapitated goose. "One result was that the sight of meat thereafter nauseated me until I was eight or ten," she wrote, "and I needed a strong will and my grandmother's arguments to overcome that nausea." This of course suggests she consumed flesh and her memoirs do not immediately mention a later-in-life change in practice.

She also wrote, "Instead of the putrefied flesh which we are accustomed to eating, perhaps science will give us chemical mixtures containing more iron and nutrients than the blood and meat we now absorb." This could be interpreted as anticipating the in-vitro meat now being developed. But it could also be read as a reflection of her belief that animal-derived foods were nutritionally necessary or superior in her era.

While it seems clear where her sympathies were, I'm unsure if Michel was a vegetarian.

Interview with David Graeber about Occupy Wall Street

Here. What makes this interesting is first of all, it is simply a smart interview. But more importantly, I have been impressed by the ways that the Occupy Wall Street movement is beginning to garner some serious attention by more mainstream lefty policy wonkish blogs. I am curious what will ultimately come of this cross-pollination. Maybe nothing. However, I really am interested and committed to things like good policy. But I am also a radical, and I tend to find there is a natural tension between those two poles. I think that ultimately the liberal desire to turn radical movements into simple policy disagreements will probably mean that long-term the radical prospects of the Occupy Wall Street movement will be unthinkable for these blogs, but it is still interesting.

Some thoughts on Simon Critchley and non-violence

I was at conference recently where Simon Critchley was the keynote. He was funny and engaging, the opening line was "Slavoj Zizek has been telling lies about me." The presentation itself was uneven, and clearly still very much a work in progress. It was also mostly a polemic against Zizek, focusing on their differing views of violence. And, I want to make three points here on Critchley's view of violence both in the speech he gave, and also in Infinitely Demanding.

(1) For some, still unexplained reason, Critchley associates anarchism with non-violence. I don't know why, considering most historical anarchist leaders are not exactly pacifists. Someone got to ask him this question at the speech, and his response was less than satisfying (as a matter of fact, he gave no reason why anarchism was connected to non-violence, and leninism to violence). He argued that there was a difference between (and here I wish I had written down his original terms) individual anarchism and ethical anarchism based on community. And, Critchley is concerned with promoting ethical anarchism. I want to return to this point below.

(2) Critchley was also concerned to change his views on violence since he wrote Infinitely Demanding. He has decided that non-violence cannot be absolute, but rather it has to be a guideline. Non-violence, thou shalt not kill, is not universal just usual, but sometimes an exceptional circumstance demands violence. Critchley is aware that this word exceptional draws to mind Schmitt, but didn't spend any real time answering what the problem might be, here. It seems to me that this brings decisionism in through the back door, and that is probably the worst way to bring decisionism in. If any of you are familiar with William Rasch's book on Schmitt, Sovereignty and Discontents, I think he makes this argument very effectively there. Orders that pretend that the political no longer exists become harder to contest. And remember your Schmitt, it isn't that violent acts are necessary for the political, but that the possibility that violence is necessary is what guarantees the political. Those orders that refuse the violence inherent in the political are all the more violent in trying to defend peace. If non-violence is a guideline, then who decides when the exceptional case presents? Who decides when violence is necessary? If one argues that each individual has the power to decide, than each individual is sovereign. And we are right back to the individualist anarchism, and we have failed to think an ethical anarchism. The question of decisionism needs to be confronted directly.

(3) Critchley also said that the acts of violence must give us shame. Now, as I said above, this talk was in work as he gave it, so I don't know how much importance should given this word "shame," but let's take it seriously for a bit. I'm not sure, first of all, what use shame is in thinking through an ethical system. I feel that shame brings in through the back door idealism. Shame is only a grounding in a ethics, if that ethical system is an idealist one. If Nietzsche teaches us nothing else, one assumes he has taught us this. If the question of decisionism remains with us, so too does a question of idealism.


He might have answers to all of these points, but I would be interested in finding out. The projects of ethical anarchism and non-violence are projects I have a lot of sympathy for, but sometimes sympathy isn't enough.