On Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Considered as One of the First Authors of the Revolution

In order to grasp what it means to call Rousseau an "author" of the Revolution, as so many revolutionaries did, it is necessary to take full measure of the difficulties of literary interpretation to which Rousseau's work gives rise, particularly around such a charged term as "author."

On Jean-Jacques Rousseau shows that Rousseau's texts consistently generate a division in their own reading, a division both designated and masked by the fiction of authorship. These divisions can occur succes...