Directed by Cédric Biagini, founder of L’Échappée editions, and Patrick Marcolini (University of Montpellier), the annual review Brazier intends to illuminate “history in an oblique manner, favoring contestations, margins, obscure, forgotten or little-known characters and events», in these words from the very first editorial.
Pursuing this objective, this fourth issue offers a unique vision throughout the 190 pages of the annual publication. The review opens – and closes – with a very special tribute to Annie Le Brun, who returned for the first issue to her journey as a writer and literary critic who lived through the surrealist period, among others, a symbol par excellence counter-history.
The side of history
Throughout the pages, we can read a file on the prostitution of minors in Paris during the Belle Époque, by the specialist in the worker and anarchist movements of this period, Anne Steiner. A little further on, the “Loufoqueries” section offers a portrait of Geneviève Zaepffel, clairvoyant “collaborator” of Marshal Pétain’s France, who had the habit of “prophesying on stage while singing the praises of Hitler”, portrait signed by Philippe Baudouin, author ofAppearances. The archives of haunted France (Hoëbeke, 2021).
The creative and joyful illustrations of Jean Aubertin complete the panel of this offbeat and abrasive magazine which effectively “discover to our readers everything that our peers (and unlike others) have been able to produce that is prodigious and singular throughout the ages.”
“Brazier. Revue de counter-histoire », L’Échappée n° 4, 2024 (annual publication, €22)
