Joseph Déjacque

Joseph Déjacque (born the December 27th 1821 and died in 1864 in Paris), militant and anarchistic writer, created the Néologisme “Libertaire”, in opposition to Libéral , in its lampoon Of the Being-Human male and female - Letter with P.J. Proudhon published in 1857 with the New-Orleans. “Workman-poet” according to a model born in the saints-simoniens mediums of the Monarchy of July and authenticates Prolétaire, Joseph Déjacque wrote at the time of a long exile in Europe then in the United States following the coup d'etat of December 2nd, 1851 an abundant and carried work. As from 1858 it published its texts itself, in the Libertarian, Journal of the social movement whose 27 numbers appear in New York until 1861, in spite of the financial problems of the author and publisher.

Workman decorator, gluer of paper-painted, Déjacque are the single contributor, holding, in tight columns and a savage feather, the chronicle of the political news and social of are time: competitions and fights of the great Nations in Europe and triumph of the authoritarianism of carnival, the Bonapartiste middle-class, in France, countryside abolitionists of John Brown, prelude to the American Civil War, miseries and illusions of the multitude of immigrant that it cotoie in America. Omnipresent, fate of the workmen in the industrial big cities of two banks, “slaves” of capitalism. It also publishes there in serial various theoretical and polemical texts and a Utopie, “Humanisphère: Anarchistic Utopia” which remained its text more read, the only one to have known several editions at the 20th century. Been unaware of in his country of origin in spite of the success of the word which he invented, Joseph Déjacque arouses a new interest since the whole of its work is available on Internet.

Biography

The exile

Registered voter the May 10th 1848 with the national Workshops, Joseph Déjacque takes probably share with the insurrection of June 1848. Decree, it is transported to Cherbourg, is brought back to Paris, is released in March or April 1849, then again imprisoned.

In August 1851, it publishes its first collection of poetries, “ Lazaréennes, fables and poetries social ”. The government of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte makes seize the work. To escape this judgment Joseph Déjacque takes refuge initially with Brussels then with London, before joining the small community of proscribed gathered with Jersey.

The July 26th 1853, it makes a speech at the time of the burial of Louise Julien, one proscribed of the popular Belleville, died in misery, speaking after Victor Hugo which had been indicated by the general meeting of proscribed.

A Libertarian in New York

Installed in New York as from 1854, durably marked by the defeat of 1848, Joseph Déjacque violently denounces in his writings the injustice of the company in which he lives and in particular the exploitation and the miserable living conditions of the proletarians and call with the social revolution. Its reflections on the individual existence in the industrial world and capitalist leads it to also work out an original theory of the universality and to preach an intransigent anarchistic policy which it exposes in particular in Humanisphère, anarchistic Utopia , (New York, 1857) and through various other texts that it publishes in his newspaper the Libertarian whose 27 numbers appear in New York of 1858 to 1861.

Intransigent anarchist, Joseph Déjacque rejects any system of representation or political delegation which would lead the individual to abdicate his will while letting another be expressed in its place, refusal which, according to its own declarations, justified its intervention in answer to Victor Hugo and which it develops in the revolutionary question written in Jersey and published in his arrival in New York in 1854. Partisan of most complete freedom than it names “individual sovereignty”, in a world without exploitation, Joseph Déjacque is known also, among the first, to have claimed in particular in Of the Being-Human male and female , in answer to the misogyny of Proudhon, the total parity for the women.

The return

“Veil with the wind! wire of the thought,
Walkers whose heart is gréement the
Veil with the wind, and hoisted flame! !
- The ideal… it is the movement. ”
- the Libertarian , n° 27, Jan. 1861

Whereas the American Civil War begins, Déjacque publishes a last number of the Libertaire in January 1861 with an urgent call: “The American Question: the irrepressible conflict” in which it exhorts the American people, which it would like “less religious and more Socialist”, to defend freedom and the Republic against the “Jesuits, the slave ones”, “absolutists”, “against the night enemies, the authoritative ones” who are with his door.

If, him, “free man of the sphere, and considering everywhere as in fatherland” still offers its services, one feels lassitude in the recall of his preceding warnings: this confrontation which it provided certainly will lead to the abolition of the slave system of the blacks that Déjacque, always fought since its arrival in America, while having noted itself the devastations at the time of its stay in New-Orleans, but it has a presentiment of that the American impressed of religiosity and avid masses to seize the promises of the new world are not ready to be released from the other slavery which it denounces, that of capitalism.

In 1861, in this first year of the American Civil War, it goes in makes benefit from the law of amnesty which has just been promulgated to return to France. It does not publish anything any more and the last years of its existence are obscure.

“He died, insane of misery, in Paris in 1864”, note right Gustave Lefrançais in his Souvenirs of a revolutionist .

Texts

The texts of Déjacques were inalienable a long time, having been the object only few rare republications partial after its death and the International institute of Social History of Amsterdam preserving the single complete collection of the known Libertaire , before its complete works (other than its poetry) are not published in 2003 on Internet.

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