An archangel identified

[Jeanne Deroin. “Lettre a M. Proudhon.” L’Opinion des Femmes. No. 1, Year 1. January 28, 1849.] Letter to Proudhon. Monsieur, I know that, preoccupied most especially with questions of political economy, you have not accepted all the consequences of the principles on which our social future rests. You are one of the most formidable adversaries of the principle of equality—a principle which does not allow unjust exclusion and privileges of sex. I know that you do not wish to recognize the right of women to civil and political equality. This right, which contain in it the abolition of all social […]

[ezcol_2third] The radical literature that any of us are actually familiar with always seems to be just a drop in the bucket. There are masses of largely ephemeral publications in every language, and all of the advances in digital archiving have only really begun to make any sort of dent in the work to be done. We can’t ignore all that ephemera, unless we’re content with a sort of abstract, top-down understanding of our traditions. After all, for every Proudhon, there were a dozen Greenes and Langlois, and for every one of them there were dozens of Junquas and Blackers, […]

The letter from Jeanne Deroin to Proudhon that I just posted appeared in French in L’Opinion de Femmes, a radical feminist journal edited by Deroin and Désirée Gay. The entire run of the paper can be found at Gallica, tucked away in one of the volumes of Les Révolutions du XIXe Siècle. L’Opinion des Femmes is great stuff, with material by Deroin, Gay, Jean Macé, C. F. Chevé, and “Jeanne Marie” (probably Jeanne-Marie-Fabienne Poinsard, aka Jenny d’Héricourt.) The beginnings of the feud between Deroin and Proudhon is documented. Expect to see a lot of translations from this paper over the […]