Napoleon Bonaparte is often referred to as a legislator, but strangely, the construction, aims, and styling of the Civil Code of the French (also named the Napoleonic Code) remain understudied. Join us for a discussion with Stefanos Geroulanos about his current project on the institution of the code, the myth that bound it to Napoleon, the “New Man” it created, and the place of the code in French and European systems of knowledge in the 19th century. Geroulanos tracks the painstaking and often uncertain production of the code into a new juridico-political regime; the new spacetime, morality, and empire the law was designed to set in motion; the expansion of the code at the heels of Napoleon's armies; and the way that the two myths, of Napoleon and the code, became intertwined in the production of a new citizen (a new “normal” man) and a new variety of sovereign.
Note: This Zoom event requires advance registration. Click here to register.
(Photo Credit: WikiCommons)
with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States
Photo credit: Napoleonic Code at Historisches Museum der Pfalz. DerHexer, Wikimedia Commons
