Ceaușescu et les avatars de la tyrannie
Ceausescu and the Avatars of Tyranny

Summary/Abstract: The imaginary of oppression has always fascinated political thinkers. During the Romanian Revolution of 1989, the figure of President Nicolae Ceausescu was incontrovertibly included in a world pantheon of tyranny. Starting from these historical considerations, this article explores the symbolic construction of Ceausescu's "tyranny", as an effect of the interaction between exogenous and endogenous representations. More precisely, the author studies the historical setting and the rhetorical instruments that contributed to the prevailing discourse about Ceauºescu's time in power. He maps the evolution of Ceausescu's image of "tyrant" on two complementary lanes. In the first instance he studies the conceptual evolution of the term "tyranny"; secondly, he explores the symbolic composition of the tyrant's image; finally, in the conclusion, he scrutinizes the symbolic reversibility of these political representations.

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