120 years after her death, the hero of the Paris Commune continues to inspire
Freedom News
In the Hôtel Oasis in Marseille, the French anarchist, feminist, and Communard Louise Michel passed away on January 9, 1905. By this time, she was one of the most prominent figures of contemporary anarchism and was often mentioned in the same breath as Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta. Today, a commemorative plaque at the hotel honours her memory, and her grave in the cemetery of Levallois-Perret—a wealthy suburb of Paris—has become a pilgrimage site. At the time of her funeral, this suburb was still considered revolutionary ground.
Louise Michel was born twice—first as a person, on May 29, 1830, and again as a myth, in 1871, in the context of the Paris Commune. In the latter sense, she lives on to this day, albeit in a highly romanticised form that is often appropriated by various political movements. The memory of the “Red Virgin”, as she has been reverently called since the Commune, has been a political issue in France since the early 20th century.
In feminist and anarchist circles, engagement with her life often begins in 1871 or after her conversion to anarchism, a narrative that has posthumously cast her as a precursor to anarcha-feminism. This portrayal, however, does not do justice to her complexity—neither in a positive nor a negative sense. Overlooked in such accounts are, on the one hand, her early literary pursuits at the age of 20 and her correspondence with her idol, the French naturalist writer Victor Hugo, underscoring her legitimacy as an author. On the other hand, they often ignore the fact that, at the beginning of the Paris Commune uprising, she supported authoritarian socialism in the vein of Auguste Blanqui.
