Anna Rosensweig: Whose Resistance Theory? From Early Modern Tragedy to January 6

Hybrid event: Conducted live at La Maison Française

Online via Zoom

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**Please note: this event will take place in English**

Whose Resistance Theory? From Early Modern Tragedy to January 6

In this talk Anna Rosensweig will discuss how recent political events have changed her intellectual and affective relationship to early modern resistance theory, a theory central to her book, Subjects of Affection: Rights of Resistance on the Early Modern French Stage (Northwestern University Press 2022). She will detail how members of the political Right in the United States— including insurrectionists, antiabortion extremists, and adherents of the QAnon conspiracy—have mobilized theories of resistance from early modern Europe to justify their opposition to state and federal law. Rather than simply dismiss these right-wing appeals to resistance theory as unscholarly and anachronistic, Prof. Rosensweig argues that we must take them seriously as an uncomfortable part of this theory’s legacy.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture

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Anna Rosensweig

Anna Rosensweig is an associate professor of French and the Director of the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. Her research and teaching focus on early modern literature and culture, the intersections of literature and political theory, and performance studies. Her first book, Subjects of Affection: Rights of Resistance on the Early Modern French Stage (Northwestern University Press 2022), offers an alternative to the modern model of human rights in an unexpected archive: the monarchist tragedies that shaped Louis XIV’s absolutist France. She is currently working on second book, Like a Public Fountain, which investigates how early modern texts and performances aligned royal bodies with elements of urban architecture, such as roads, bridges, and fountains. Her work has appeared in journals such as Early Modern French Studies, Renaissance Drama, and the Modern Language Quarterly.