WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, Monde Libertaire - Ideas and struggles: The stories of Elisée Reclus (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 From stream to mountain ---- We, in the program Au fil des pages on

Radio libertaire, we like Elisée Reclus. We have been talking about him
for a long time. And that has nothing to do with the craze that he has
known for some time. Recently, we invited Nicolas Eprendre from the
editorial committee with Pauline Couteau, Federico Ferretti, Philippe
Pelletier of the book Elisée Reclus, les 101 mots, published in the fall
of 2024 by Les presses du réel. Today, I would like to emphasize Les
histoires d'Elisée Reclus by Benoît Bodlet at the Presses universitaires
de Lyon, also in 2024. Two complementary works. ---- We obviously know
The New Universal Geography, Man and the Earth, sums in several volumes.
But Benoît Bodlet offers us a reflection on Histoire d'un ruisseau
(1869) and Histoire d'une montagne (1890), two works with a smaller
volume and more accessible content, intended for a young audience. In a
literary style of fine quality. Note that the writing of the second was
delayed due to the Paris Commune and the imprisonment of Elisée. These
are indeed geographical treatises that demonstrate his talents as a
geographer and teacher. In addition, from 1874, he clearly presented
himself as an anarchist and provided relevant theoretical elements.
During his exile in Switzerland, he lived in a communard environment
with James Guillaume, Arthur Arnould, Gustave Courbet. He led a section
of the Jura Federation. In 1877, in Saint-Imier, he spoke of
"anarchy[...], this horizon of freedom that we want for human society".
He became involved in a revolutionary socialist review, Le Travailleur.
Others will come like Pierre Kropotkine with Le Révolté.

The democratic sharing of knowledge

The pedagogue is fundamental in the life of Elisée Reclus with the
concern for the democratic sharing of knowledge around two components of
his thought: scientific dissemination and emancipation. Benoît Bodlet
recalls that "knowledge is a catalyst for emancipation and this is
central to the libertarian project". Joël Cornuault explains that
Histoire d'une montagne, "which has nothing to do with an openly
anarchist libel[...]nevertheless lets us hear in a muted way the
libertarian note of the man proud to belong to himself, a citizen in
solidarity with an independent republic". Let us highlight "the last
chapter of Histoire d'une montagne which ends with the hope that the
free man can free himself from the hold of the gods who, in leaving,
take with them the procession of kings and their sad representatives on
earth".

Benoît Bodlet intends to recall the context of the writing of the two
works by analyzing the reissues, the approaches of authors who tend to
make Elisée Reclus pass from libertarian geographer to romantic
ecologist. A dense chapter concerns education and the teaching of
geography, a teaching of the gaze, the lesson of things that brings to
mind the pedagogy of Louise Michel. The sometimes criticized Reclusian
style must be revisited to appreciate its clarity. A final chapter
concerns the new social and political space with the image of the ravine
and its opening. Let us not forget this notion of geohistory that makes
the teaching of geography so alive.

Proposing a new political space

Reclus's objective insists throughout the pages on "the emancipation of
all living beings without distinction" and the mutual aid that we find
in Kropotkin.

Let us take up Benoît Bodlet's words. "In summary, we will try to answer
this question: how and, more precisely, by what literary means, does
Elisée Reclus denounce the spatial forms of power and the spatial
dimension of injustice in Histoire d'un ruisseau and Histoire d'une
montagne in order to propose a new political space?"

One character trait of Elisée Reclus seems to me particularly worthy of
being noted: his rejection of mountain climbers who climb for the love
of glory. "By analogy, one must refuse to reach the top of society, by
rejecting competition, ranks and power." And to conclude, a wink from
Elisée Reclus to our hiking friends: "I savored the pleasure of
completely satisfying my eyes at the sight of what snow, rocks, forests
and pastures offered me of beauty. I was hovering halfway up, between
the two zones of the earth and the sky, and I felt free without being
isolated. Nowhere did a sweeter feeling of peace penetrate my heart."

* Benoît Bodlet
The stories of Elisée Reclus, scientific disclosure and emancipation
Ed. Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2024

https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8205
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca