Posted on by anarchopac
The French anarchist Louise Michel was born in 1830 and died in 1905. She led a very eventful life, which included fighting in the Paris Commune of 1871. In this video I’m going to be drawing attention to an aspect of her life which doesn’t get the attention it deserves. She was extremely chaotic good.
As a child she gave away her possessions to poor people. This even included her shoes on one occasion. Not content with giving away items she personally owned, Michel also stole money, fruits and vegetables from her grandparents and then distributed them to local peasants in her relatives’ name. This led to unexpected consequences when the peasants arrived at the house to thank her grandparents for their generosity. Michel claims to have “laughed” in response to the “great scenes” which occurred during these moments. (Thomas 1983, 21; Michel 1981, 6)
During her childhood Michel attended church regularly (Thomas 1983, 20). This did not stop her from also attempting “alchemy, astrology, the summoning of spirits” at the top of a tower which she decorated with the skeletons of dogs, cats and horses. At one point she took her practice of witchcraft to the next level and tried to summon the devil. She wrote in her autobiography, “among haunted ruins I drew magical circles, and I declared my love to Satan. Satan didn’t come, which led me to think he didn’t exist.” (Michel 1981, 20, 19)
This chaotic good energy continued into adulthood. During the 1860s she earned a living as a teacher in Paris (Thomas 1983, 42-3). In her autobiography she claimed that one night when walking home she deliberately scared a member of the bourgeoisie. She wrote,
Another time I was returning home on foot fairly late, and I had on a long cloak which enveloped me completely. I was wearing a sort of wide hat made out of shaggy cloth which cast a lot of shadows on my face, and brand-new ankle boots from the pawnshop, For some reason the heels made a lot of noise. The newspapers recently had been writing a lot about nocturnal attacks. Some good bourgeois heard my boots ringing, and being unable to make out my exact form because of my cloak and hat, he began to run with such fear that it gave me the idea of following him for a bit to scare him properly.
He went along, looking around to see if anyone would come to help him. With the black night and the deserted streets, the bourgeois was scared witless, and I was having a really good time. He lengthened his stride as much as he could. I kept to the shadows and made my heels strike even louder, because that noise was what kept up his fright. I don’t know what district we had come to when I let the bourgeois go, yelling at him: ‘Must you be so stupid?’ (Michel 1981, 48-9)
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