The Cultural Politics of Luxury in Eighteenth-Century France

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8940290
AutoresJohn Shovlin (autor correspondente)
Ano2000
Volume23
Fascículo4
Páginas577-606
Data de publicação2000-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoFrench Historical Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0016-1071 • E-ISSN: 1527-5493
EditoraDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00161071-23-4-577
OpenAlexW1964247472
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas12
Referências citadas31

This article argues for a reconsideration of the relationship between economic transformation during the final decades of the Old Regime and the origins of the French Revolution. Changes in consumption during the eighteenth century, compounded by a sensationalist philosophy that problematized issues of representation, destabilized the practice of using pomp to constitute social status. The ensuing crisis transformed the category luxury. Long used to denounce the usurping consumption of the lowborn, the term came to be employed in the decades after 1750 to denounce all uses of pomp to constitute political authority and social rank. While the older language of luxury defended a traditional conception of the social order, the luxury critique that developed in the second half of the eighteenth century articulated a radically different vision of society and directed a corrosive attack at the “aristocratic” social order of the Old Regime. This new social critique became a staple of radical discourse in the 1780s

Cultural politics · Political science · Politics · Decadence, Literature, and Society · European Political History Analysis · French Historical and Cultural Studies · History · Law