Sewing Fighting and Writing

Seamstresses were central figures in the socio-political and cultural events of 19th and early-20th century France, but their stories and political writings have remained marginalised and obscured. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished documents from the industrial revolution, this study provides a Foucauldian genealogy of the Parisian seamstress. Looking at the assemblage of radical practices in work, politics and culture, it explores the constitution of the self of the seamstress in the era of early industrialisation and revolutionary events, and considers her contribution to the socio-political and cultural formations in modernity.