Hot Terror

In La Machine a Terreur, Laurent Dispot discovers a singular origin for Terror in French Revolution: thermodynamics. He describes founding process that imparts energy to Jacobin government. Terror is a closed system, it operates like a machine that transforms revolutionary heat into work. A heat source is used, and heat flows toward a series of regulatory structures-the Terror contains, diverts, and transforms original insurrectional From this point of view, writes Dispot, the Terror is nothing but manner in which an appropriate machine transforms popular heat into governmental (73).2 Dispot traces archeology of this unhappy path, of this energy buildup. First there is popular insurrection of 10 August ending in confiscation of riots by Jacobin administration in name of people. The people begin to 'terrorize,' Dispot points out. The people massacre (from July '89 until September '92). work of transformation then begins. To avoid losses, heat generated is harnessed by tribunals, Committees (of Public Safety and of General Security), army (73). Only this analysis inspired by physics allows us to understand Saint-Just's enigmatic remark: The Revolution is frozen. According to Dispot, Saint-Just was passing final judgment on supposed results of Terror, a balance sheet expressed in terms of energy. Saint-Just's remark would thus admirably demonstrate journey accomplished by Revolution: from popular heat of insurrections, source and origin, to its cooling down by Robespierrist administration. Such was weakening, degradation of Revolution

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