(Source: University of Virginia Press)
The University of Virginia Press is
publishing a book on the history of debt imprisonment and bankruptcy in
Revolutionary France next month.
ABOUT
THE BOOK
"The most dishonorable act that can
dishonor a man." Such is Félix Grandet’s unsparing view of bankruptcy,
adding that even a highway robber—who at least "risks his own life in
attacking you"—is worthier of respect. Indeed, the France of Balzac’s day
was an unforgiving place for borrowers. Each year, thousands of debtors found
themselves arrested for commercial debts. Those who wished to escape debt
imprisonment through bankruptcy sacrificed their honor—losing, among other
rights and privileges, the ability to vote, to serve on a jury, or even to
enter the stock market.
Arguing that French Revolutionary and
Napoleonic legislation created a conception of commercial identity that tied
together the debtor’s social, moral, and physical person, In the Red
and in the Black examines the history of debt imprisonment and
bankruptcy as a means of understanding the changing logic of commercial debt.
Following the practical application of these laws throughout the early
nineteenth century, Erika Vause traces how financial failure and fraud became
legally disentangled. The idea of personhood established in the Revolution’s
aftermath unraveled over the course of the century owing to a growing penal
ideology that stressed the state’s virtual monopoly over incarceration and to
investors’ desire to insure their financial risks. This meticulously researched
study offers a novel conceptualization of how central "the economic"
was to new understandings of self, state, and the market. Telling a story
deeply resonant in our own age of ambivalence about the innocence of failures
by financial institutions and large-scale speculators, Vause reveals how legal
personalization and depersonalization of debt was essential for unleashing the
latent forces of capitalism itself.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Erika Vause is Assistant Professor at St.
John's University
More information here
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