Writing Louise Michel: The Formation and Development of a Mythologised Revolutionary

Abstract

This chapter looks at the cultural afterlives of the nineteenth-century anarchist Louise Michel (1830–1905). It argues that a dynamic of mythologisation has consistently underpinned the long durée recollection of Michel’s unequivocally contentious life. Through an overview of mediations of Michel’s life and person, from those produced during her lifetime to the present day, including both her memoirs and written accounts of her life by subsequent remembering subjects, the chapter shows that she has often been represented as a superlative or superhuman figure. Questioning the mechanisms behind and effects of Michel’s remembrance in hyperbolic and abstracted forms, it argues that Michel’s radicalism and gender have played a central role in her mythologisation.