L'axe masculin/féminin chez Edmund Burke. De l'esthétique à la politique

Résumé En

Michel Fuchs : Gender in Edmund Burke's esthetics and politics. This article deals with Burke's aesthetics from the point of view of his surprisingly gendered preconceptions. While he set out to establish an aesthetics based on the human passions in general, these passions are rapidly seen to be heavily gendered, for the sublime is masculine and the beautiful feminine. Equally surprising is the fact that when Burke became a politician, he did not feel the need to redefine his aesthetic categories but indulged in the widespread prejudices which, in Britain in particular, tended to sexualize the social classes. He even maintained these sexual/social prejudices when confronted with the French Revolution, thereby managing to attack the 'philosophers of the shambles' while at the same amplifying their very sarcasms against the nobility. His 'truly republican' defense of the old regime is at times very similar to the attacks on the monarchy made by the advocates of the French republic.