Occupy the premises, take power

Abstract

What places must be occupied to take power ? From Gabriel Naudé in the XVII^thcentury to Curzio Malaparte in the XX^thcentury, the question seems to concern coup d'état techniques that can effectively reveal the hidden side of the state, the better to overthrow it. While our reflections inevitably lead to this worrying questioning of political violence today, they originate here in a pragmatic and territorial analysis of urban situations at the end of the Middle Ages : from Payerne to Florence, via the French countryside stirred up by the Jacquerie, by following the gestures of the rebels, and listening to them requalify the places of power in deed and word, we seek to grasp in situ the logic of political spacing. From the Ciompirevolt of 1378 to the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, it's not just a question of coming together to expose one's own vulnerability and thus put pressure on the powers that be, but rather, as the contemporary philosophy of architectural dislocation suggests, to cancel out in one place the power of their identifying narratives.

Contents

• In the beginning, it was just a game : the event as a failed ritual
• Taking to the streets, occupying places and getting a taste for tumult : in Payerne in 1420, a political carnival conquered the long term (Matthias Wirz, "  Muerentles moignes ! ". La révolte de Payerne (1420), Lausanne, 1997)
• When the prior's orchard becomes a platea communis
• Qualifying, dequalifying, politically requalifying places : scenes of speech
• Se rassembler tient lieu d'assemblée : l'espace de la délibération spontanée (Patrick Boucheron, "Dis-assembling the Civic Square", in Ann Davidian and Laurent Jeanpierre eds, What Makes an Assembly? Stories, Experiences, Inquiries, London, Sternberg Press & Evens Foundation, 2022)
• Distinguishing between public places and public spaces (Patrick Boucheron, " Espace public et lieux publics : approches en histoire urbaine ", in Patrick Boucheron and Nicolas Offenstadt dir. L'Espace public au Moyen Âge. Débats autour de Jürgen Habermas ( Paris: PUF, 2011)
• Places and spaces for politics
• "  To givespace is to cancel in one place the power of these identificatory narratives " (Benoît Goetz, La Dislocation. Architecture et philosophie, Lagrasse, 2018)
• In the orchard, a political dream : not a beautiful escape, but a heterotopia
• Following the gestures of the rebels : mapping places of power
• During the Jacquerie, the attack on castles and the " commotion des non-nobles contre les nobles " (Gaëtan Bonnot, La Jacquerie (XIV^th -XXI^stsiècles), devenirs des effrois de 1358, Paris, PUF, 2026)
• Tout ne feust réadmené à aire : la destruction du château de Vez en 1358 (Bernard Ancien, " Le château de Vez pendant la guerre de Cent Ans ", Mémoires de la Fédération des sociétés d'histoire et d'archéologie de l'Aisne, 1982)
• Città turrita et damnatio memoriae dans l'Italie communale : l'exemple de la contrada Uberti à Florence
• The urbanocentric logic of infamous painting (Giuliano Milani, " Greed and betrayal of the common good. Une peinture infamante du XIII^thsiècle ", Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales, 66-2011)
• The overthrow of the symbolic order : from the disgrace of the banished to that of the city
• " On June 15 1378, Viva il Popolo was shouted several times in the Palazzo dei Priori " (Pagolo di ser Guido cimatore)
• Instituting politics by exposing one's own vulnerability
• The visual resemantization of Florentine civic space by the Ciompitumult (Richard Trexler, "Folow the Flag: the Ciompi Revolt seen from the streets", Bibliothèque d'humanisme et de Renaissance, 1984)
• An inversion of the campanarian order : the periphery sets the pace (Alessandro Stella, La Révolte des Ciompi, Paris, MSH, 1993)
• Machiavelli and the discourse of the Ciompileader  : carrying the word of a place or finding a place for every word ? (Jean-Claude Zancarini, " La révolte des Ciompi : Machiavelli, ses sources et ses lecteurs ", Cahiers philosophiques, 2004)
• Sexualizing tyranny : when the sovereign body is up for grabs (Jocelyne Dakhlia, Harems et Sultans. Genre et despotisme au Maroc et ailleurs, XIV^th -XX^thsiècle, Toulouse, Anacharsis, 2024)
• Molitia et apoderamiento en Castille au XV^thsiècle : la ritualisation de l'atteinte au roi (François Foronda, El espanto y el miedo. Golpismo, emociones políticas y constitucionalismo en la Edad Media, Madrid, Dykinson, 2013)
• Parce que l'État n'est pas " un homme mortel ", les deux temps de la conjuration des Pazzi en 1478 (Lauro Martines, Le Sang d'Avril : Florence et le complot contre les Médicis, Paris, Albin Michel, 2011)
• The dazzle of the coup d'état : " we saw the thunder fall sooner than we heard it rumble in the clouds " (Gabriel Naudé, Considérations politiques sur les coups d'État, reed. Paris, Éditions de Paris, 1988)
• "  Theinfiltration of a small but essential cog in the state's administrative machine " (Edward Luttwark, Coup d'État, mode d'emploi [1969], Paris, reed., Odile Jacob, 1996)
• (Patrick Boucheron, " Théories et pratiques du coup d'État dans l'Italie princière du Quattrocento ", in François Foronda, Jean-Philippe Genet, José Maria Nieto Soria dir., Coups d'État à la fin du Moyen Âge ? Aux fondements du pouvoir politique en Europe occidentale, Madrid, Collection de la Casa de Velàzquez, 2005).