This essay argues that the revolutionary potential of the poster—established by a legacy of the political poster extending back to the French Revolution—and the poster’s mode of collective spectatorship made it subject to greater scrutiny, censorship, and public debate in the period after the passage of the 1881 Press Law (loi de press, 29 Juillet, 1881) until 1893 when political propaganda was increasingly repressed following anarchist bombings. Through an examination of archival material and contemporary press articles, the essay analyzes the poster’s mode of reception and its political message as having earned its reputation as a subversive object that required surveillance and scrutiny even after its display had been authorized under the 1881 Press Law. Despite these challenges, political activists from 1881 to 1893 were able to disseminate their radical viewpoints through clandestine distribution of posters that represented ephemeral resistance to the Third Republican government.
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