In this article, I look at Jules Vallès’s L’Insurgé to argue that its narrative style performs the politics of anonymity at the heart of the Paris Commune. To do this, I analyse three key elements of the novel – its autofictionality, its fragmentation and its ubiquitous present tense. By rejecting the exemplarity inherent in autobiography, this autofiction avant la lettre implies that the I of the narrator Jacques Vingtras, himself a stand-in for the author Jules Vallès, can be substituted with any other I. In the ‘révolution anonyme’ of 1871, there can be no leader; in its narrative, the central character is replaceable. The fragmentary writing further resists the unity of nineteenth-century novels to draw portraits of various actors of revolt; centralised revolution is abandoned in favour of communal politics. Finally, the narration in the present tense creates a sense of immediacy which rejects the glorification of the revolutionary past, and instead underscores the Paris Commune’s new politics in the making. The novel is thus enacting the ‘grande fédération des douleurs’ to which it is dedicated.

中文翻译：

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Jules Vallès 的 L'Insurgé 和民众起义的叙述

在这篇文章中，我查看了儒勒·瓦莱 (Jules Vallès) 的《浪潮》(L'Insurgé) 以论证其叙事风格表现了巴黎公社核心的匿名政治。为此，我分析了这部小说的三个关键要素——它的自创性、它的碎片化和它无处不在的现在时。通过拒绝自传中固有的示范性，这部自传小说的前卫暗示叙述者雅克·文特拉斯（Jacques Vingtras 本人是作者儒勒·瓦莱的替身）的 I 可以被任何其他 I 取代。 在 1871 年的“匿名革命”中，不可能有领导者；在它的叙述中，中心人物是可以替换的。零散的写作进一步抵制了 19 世纪小说的统一，描绘了各种反抗者的肖像；集中革命被放弃，转而支持社区政治。最后，现在时的叙述创造了一种直接的感觉，它拒绝对革命历史的美化，而是强调巴黎公社正在形成的新政治。因此，这部小说正在制定它所致力于的“grande fédération des douleurs”。