The counter-revolution has traditionally been interpreted in relation to the glorious histories of the past, namely through the discourses and narratives produced by the contemporary liberal state. The conceptual core that supports this approach is that which dictates that a line of development always corresponds to a line of opposition.
It follows, therefore, that the counter-revolution is a sort of reaction – the opposite of the revolution or, in other words, a revolution in reverse. However, to paraphrase the
Savoyard Joseph De Maistre, the counter-revolution was not «a revolution in reverse, but the opposite of the revolution»1. It was, indeed, another way of looking at things 373 and facing the present, but without linking its existence to the changes proposed by the revolution; instead, it rested on its own intrinsic logic, entrenched long before the revolution was a fact. Essentially, the counter-revolution did not draw its meaning from the opposition, but from the defense of a logic that existed before the revolution’s appearance on the scen
