Foucault and his Critics – two minor notes on his exchanges with Jacques Derrida and J.M. Pelorson

Posted on February 8, 2026 by stuartelden
Derrida, “A propos de «Cogito et histoire de la folie»”
Derrida, “A propos de «Cogito et histoire de la folie»”
Pelorson, “Michel Foucault et l'Espagne"
Pelorson, “Michel Foucault et l’Espagne”
“Lettre de M. Michel Foucault”
“Lettre de M. Michel Foucault”

Two small things I’ve found or noticed recently which shed a little light on Foucault’s engagement with his critics.

1. Jacques Derrida

I have discussed the Derrida-Foucault debate about Foucault’s History of Madness before, most fully in The Archaeology of Foucault (pp. 16-21). I’m not going to repeat that or provide all the references again here. Essentially, Derrida gave a lecture on the book in 1963, “Cogito et histoire de la folie”, which Foucault attended, and Derrida published his critique in the Revue de métaphysique et morale later that same year. Derrida reprinted the text in his book L’Écriture et la différence in 1967, which is translated as Writing and Difference. Foucault eventually responded, first in a text for a Japanese audience, in part because they were going to include Derrida’s text in a journal section on Foucault’s work, and then in a long appendix to the Gallimard edition of Histoire de la folie in 1972. The Tel reedition of that text in 1976 drops the two appendices, but they are included in Dits et écrits (as is a translation of the Japanese response and the book’s original 1961 preface, which was removed from the 1972 version). All these texts by Foucault are translated in the 2006 History of Madness. (I list the various editions of Foucault’s book and outline the differences between them here.)

There are also some differences between the journal version of Derrida’s critique and the book version, one of which is discussed by Edward Baring in an important article “Liberalism and the Algerian War: The Case of Jacques Derrida”, published in Critical Inquiry in 2010. I made use of that article in The Archaeology of Foucault, since it was useful in alerting me that there were differences between the article and the book versions. There are some additional notes in the 1967 version, and some other changes. The most important is the one which Baring focuses on, a change of a passage in the article (p. 466) to the book (p. 59 of the French; pp. 42-43 of the English translation).

In The Archaeology of Foucault I also made use of a few letters between Foucault and Derrida, some of which were quoted by Benoît Peeters in his biography of Derrida, and some of which were included in the Derrida Cahier de l’Herne. Some of Derrida’s letters to Foucault are now accessible in the Foucault archive at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. I was looking at these mainly because of Foucault’s correspondence with Georges Dumézil. But the alphabetical proximity of Deleuze to Derrida and Dumézil gave me a chance to have a look at these too. They confirmed the sense I expressed in The Archaeology of Foucault that any break between Foucault and Derrida was not caused by the 1963 lecture, but came somewhat later. In one instance there was the copy of a letter in Cahier de l’Herne which differed slightly – the publication clearly used the version in Derrida’s archive, as he kept a copy. But seeing these letters also indicated something else, which I had previously missed – and in my defence, so had most previous commentators on this debate.

This was the text, “A propos de «Cogito et histoire de la folie»”, which Derrida published in Revue de métaphysique et morale in 1964, in the first issue after the one which included his original critique. It’s a short text of four pages, and Derrida shared the typescript with Foucault before its publication. An editorial note says: “We publish here the notes or additions which the author made available to us after the printing [Nous publions ici des notes ou additions que l’auteur nous a fait parvenir après l’impression]”.

This is the source of most of the additional notes in the book version. Until now, I’d thought these notes only appeared in the book in 1967. This 1964 piece is rarely cited, presumably because the 1967 book or its translation suffices. One piece which does cite it has some useful discussion of how Derrida revised the piece between 1963 and 1967 – Seferin James, “Derrida, Foucault and ‘Madness, the Absence of an Œuvre’”.

Derrida incorporated these additions into the 1967 book version of this text, though with the exception of note 2 did not include the titles of the notes which appeared in 1964:

  • Note 1 (1964 article, p. 116) = L’écriture et la différence, pp. 53-54 n. 1; Writing and Difference, p. 390 n. 3.
  • Note 2 (1964 article, pp. 116-17) = L’écriture et la différence, p. 79 n. 1; Writing and Difference, p. 392 n. 15.
  • Note 3 (1964 article, p. 117) = L’écriture et la différence, p. 81 n. 1; Writing and Difference, p. 392 n. 16. 
  • Note 4 (1964 article, p. 117) = L’écriture et la différence, p. 83 n. 1; Writing and Difference, pp. 392-93 n. 21. (missing the title of the note)
  • Note 5 (1964 article, pp. 117-18) = L’écriture et la différence, p. 89-90 n. 1; Writing and Difference, pp. 393-94 n. 27. (missing the title of the note)
  • Note 6 (1964 article, pp. 118-19) = L’écriture et la différence, pp. 90-91 n. 1; Writing and Difference, pp. 294-95 n. 28. Derrida adds “Mais Dieu, c’est l’autre nom de l’absolu de la raison elle-même, de la raison et du sens en général” to the start of the note in 1967.

The other notes were in the 1963 publication, but as Baring and James indicate, there were other changes between that and the book version. I will follow up this post with a list of the other, most substantive, changes between the 1963 article and 1967 book.

It’s often remarked that Foucault took a long time to reply to Derrida’s 1963 critique. It’s less often mentioned that the text he was responding to was not fixed until 1967, though as I’ve indicated here, the additional notes were published in 1964.

2. J.M. Pelorson

In their September-October 1971 issue, the journal La Pensée published a letter from Foucault, in response to a piece by J.M. Pelorson, “Michel Foucault et l’Espagne: Analyse critique des exemples hispaniques dans Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique et dans Les mots et les choses”, which they had published the previous year. I’ve not found much about the author, Jean-Marc Pelorson. Persée says he was a scholar of Spanish, Dean of the Faculty of Letters at Poitiers, and author of a number of reviews in the Bulletin hispanique. He seems to have been predominantly a Cervantes scholar, which would explain his interest in Foucault’s use of Don Quixote in both History of Madness and The Order of Things.

Foucault’s response is reproduced in Dits et écrits in Vol II of the original edition, Vol I of the Quarto reprint, as text 96. This text is curious because the editors of Dits et écrits reproduce the printed version of the letter but note a number of variants in notes, showing the text which Foucault had written before the editors of La Pensée amended it for publication. There are relatively few texts in Dits et écrits where variants are noted – this is usually done for texts published in two different forms in Foucault’s lifetime, though it is far from complete on this (on which, see here).

At the time Dits et écrits was published, editors were following Foucault’s “no posthumous publications” request strictly. In this instance they were following another logic – although the variants hadn’t been published in Foucault’s lifetime, he had very clearly wanted them to be. In English, most of the text is included in “Monstrosities in Criticism”, which appeared in The New York Times Book Review, which also responds to George Steiner, and is itself translated (back) into French as text number 97. There is no separate English translation of text 96.

Of the review in La Pensée, the editors of Dits et écrits say: “This text had been subject to some amendments on the part of M. Foucault, on the request of Marcel Cornu, who nevertheless modified certain terms [Ce texte avait fait l’objet d’atténtuations de la part de M. Foucault, à la demande de Marcel Cornu, qui en modifia néanmoins certains termes]” (editorial note, Dits et écrits, Vol II, p. 209).

Foucault begins in uncompromising fashion: “In his article, Mr Pelorson subjects my text to a number of major distortions which render any substantive discussion pointless, but which must be noted for the honor of criticism”. The last few words replace the original “for purely moral reasons” (p. 209). One of the criticisms is that Pelorson was working with the shorter abridged version of Foucault’s History of Madness, which has long been discussed as a problem in the anglophone reception of Foucault’s work, but its use is more unusual in a French discussion.

Foucault objects to Pelorson’s characterisation of his work as “structuralist”. “But I have never, at any time, used the methods specific to structural analysis [les méthodes propres aux analyses structurales]. I have never claimed to be a structuralist, on the contrary. This I have said, repeated, explained for years [Cela, je l’ai dit, répété, expliqué depuis des années]” (p. 209). Pelorson’s use of some phrases to characterise Foucault are “for those who have read me, so many aberrations” (p. 210).

Some of Foucault’s original language is indeed striking. He repeatedly claims that Pelorson’s argument is full of “mensonges”, lies, which the published version has as “inexactitudes”, inaccuracies. Foucault’s use of “incertitude” is changed to “ignorance” (p. 210 and the notes on that page). There are other changes, but this gives something of the tone. But there is another change which struck me on looking at this text again. The published version has “Un tour de passe-passe”, but the original “Une jonglerie” – difficult to translate either but perhaps “a sleight of hand” and “a juggling trick”. 

When La Pensée published the letter, they preceded it with a brief comment.

In issue number 152 (July-August 1970) of La Pensée, two articles on Michel Foucault’s work appeared. The author of the first of these articles, Dominique Lecourt, indicating the novelty of The Archaeology of Knowledge, sought to show that this latest book was “a decisive turning point in Foucault’s work”.

The second article, by J.M. Pelorson, was more limited and modest in its scope. The author, a Hispanist, focused solely on passages in which Foucault referred to Spain in two works which preceded The Archaeology of Knowledge. He specified in the subtitle of his article that it was a ‘critical analysis of historical examples’. He also informed readers that the quotations referred ‘respectively to Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique, an abridged edition of Histoire de la folie, 10/18 collection, and The Order of Things (Gallimard, 1966).

M. Foucault sent us a ‘response’ concerning only J.M. Pelorson’s article. Although its tone in certain passages is more polemic than discussion, we feel it is our duty to publish it (p. 141, not included in the reprint in Dits et écrits).

Foucault’s archive has two letters from Marcel Cornu concerning this response. The first, of 20 May 1971, acknowledges Foucault’s letter, and expresses surprise and upset about the response, especially its tone, and says that the journal would be within its rights to refuse to publish any of it. But on reflection, they will include the letter in the July issue, so that readers can get a sense of the way Foucault engages with a critic, the tone of his response, and the detailed points he raises. A subsequent letter to Foucault from 18 July 1971 says that there was no room for the letter in the July issue, but that it would still appear, despite Foucault’s refusal to moderate the tone. It appears that the changes which the editors of Dits et écrits indicate were made were despite Foucault’s refusal.

It is not surprising, then, that the editors, Daniel Defert and François Ewald, would have recalled Foucault’s reaction to this, and used the opportunity, 23 years later, to rectify the situation. The text they published means they must have had access to the original, unamended letter. Although Foucault’s response was not published until 1971, I suspect that Pelorson is one of the people he has in mind when he wrote a preface to the English translation of The Order of Things in 1970, in which he said:

This last point is a request to the English-speaking reader. In France, certain half-witted ‘commentators’ persist in labelling me a ‘structuralist’. I have been unable to get it into their tiny minds that I have used none of the methods, concepts, or key terms that characterize structural analysis (p. xv). 

The French translation of this text – a translation back into French – refers to them as “certains «commentateurs» bornés” (Dits et écrits, text 72, Vol II, p. 13). That’s a fairly literal translation of the English phrase, perhaps closer to “narrow-minded” than “half-witted”. The original French text of the English preface, in Foucault’s archives and still unpublished, has the word bateleurs, jesters or jokers. The dismissive tone, as well as the substance of the claim, is similar to this response to Pelorson. And, as I have indicated elsewhere, Foucault is being unfair to those who relate his work to structuralism, even if by 1970 he is clearly disassociating himself from this mode of thought.

References

Edward Baring, “Liberalism and the Algerian War: The Case of Jacques Derrida”, Critical Inquiry 36 (2), 2010, 239-61.

Jacques Derrida, ‘Cogito et histoire de la folie’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale 68 (4), 1963, 460-94.

Jacques Derrida, “A propos de «Cogito et histoire de la folie»”, Revue de métaphysique et morale 69 (1), 1964, 116-19.

Jacques Derrida, L’Écriture et la différence, Paris: Seuil, 1967; Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, London: Routledge, 1978.

Stuart Elden, The Archaeology of Foucault, Cambridge: Polity, 2023.

Stuart Elden, “Foucault and Structuralism” in Daniele Lorenzini (ed.), The Foucauldian Mind, London: Routledge, forthcoming 2026.

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London: Tavistock, 1970. This text has no named translator, but see my discussion here.

Michel Foucault, “Préface à l’édition anglaise”, trans. F. Durant-Bogaert, in Dits et écrits, eds. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Paris: Gallimard, four volumes, 1994, Vol II, 7-13.

Michel Foucault, “Lettre de M. Michel Foucault”, La Pensée 159, septembre-octobre 1971, 141-144; reprinted in Dits et écrits, eds. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Paris: Gallimard, four volumes, 1994, Vol II, 209-14.

Michel Foucault, “Monstrosities in Criticism”, Diacritics 1 (1), 1971, 57-60.

Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, “Lettres de Michel Foucault et de Jacques Derrida, janvier–mars 1963”, in Marie-Louise Mallet and Ginette Michaud eds., Jacques Derrida: Cahier L’Herne, Paris: Éditions de L’Herne, 2004, 111–16.

Seferin James, “Derrida, Foucault and ‘Madness, the Absence of an Œuvre’”, Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy III (2), 2011, 379-403 (open access).

Dominque Lecourt, “Sur l’Archéologie et le savoir: A propos de Michel Foucault”, La Pensée 152, août 1970, 69-87.

Benoît Peeters, Derrida, Paris: Flammarion, 2010; Derrida: A Biography, trans. Andrew Brown, Cambridge: Polity, 2013.

J.-M. Pelorson, “Michel Foucault et l’Espagne: Analyse critique des exemples hispaniques dans Histoire de la folie a l’âge classique et dans Les mots et les choses”, La Pensée 152, août 1970, 88-99.

Archives

NAF28730, Fonds Michel Foucault, Bibliothèque nationale de France, https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc98634s

NAF28804, Michel Foucault. Lettres reçues I, Bibliothèque nationale de France,  https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc1020245

This is the 58th post of a weekly series, posted every Sunday throughout 2025, and now entering a second year. The posts are short essays with indications of further reading and sources. They are not as formal as something I’d try to publish more conventionally, but are hopefully worthwhile as short sketches of histories and ideas. They are usually tangential to my main writing focus, a home for spare parts, asides, dead-ends and possible futures. I hope there is some interest in them. They are provisional and suggestions are welcome. A few, usually shorter, pieces in a similar style have been posted mid-week. I’m not sure I’ll keep to a weekly rhythm in 2026, but there will be at least a few more pieces.

The full chronological list of ‘Sunday histories’ is here, with a thematic ordering here.

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault | Leave a comment

Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke, Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction – Oxford University Press, November 2025 and New Books discussion

Posted on February 7, 2026 by stuartelden

Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke, Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction – Oxford University Press, November 2025

I’ve shared the book details before. There is now a New Books discussion with Caleb Zakarin – thanks to dmf for the link.

Human geography offers answers to some of the most important challenges of our time. To understand contemporary struggles over global economic inequality, forced migration, racial injustice, gender justice, and the climate crisis, we must grasp the ways in which these are fought over and through space. 

Human Geography, A Very Short Introduction by Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke explains how the subject can aid a better knowledge of the modern world. It examines the formation of power systems and the ways in which they have been constructed, subverted, and resisted over time. This Very Short Introduction explores the topic through seven spaces that define the present: the colony, the pipeline, the border, the high rise, the workplace, the conservation area, and outer space. In addition, the authors take a critical view of the discipline and its history, but argue for its continuing vitality.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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Brahim El Guabli, Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences – University of California Press, November 2025 and New Books discussion

Posted on February 6, 2026 by stuartelden

Brahim El Guabli, Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences – University of California Press, November 2025

New Books discussion with Ibrahim Fawzy – thanks to dmf for the links

Desert Imaginations traces the cultural and intellectual histories that have informed the prevalent ideas of deserts across the globe. The book argues that Saharanism—a globalizing imaginary that perceives desert spaces as empty, exploitable, and dangerous—has been at the center of all desert-focused enterprises. Encompassing spiritual practices, military thinking, sexual fantasies, experiential quests, extractive economies, and experimental schemes, among other projects, Saharanism has shaped the way deserts not only are constructed intellectually but are acted upon. From nuclear testing to border walls, and much more, Brahim El Guabli articulates some of Saharanism’s consequential manifestations across different deserts. Desert Imaginations draws on the abundant historical literature and cultural output in multiple languages and across disciplines to delineate the parameters of Saharanism. Against Saharanism’s powerful and reductive vision of deserts, the book rehabilitates a tradition of desert eco-care that has been at work in desert Indigenous people’s literary, artistic, scholarly, and ritualistic practices.

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Lasse Thomassen, Derrida, Deconstruction and Political Theory – Edinburgh University Press, January 2026

Posted on February 5, 2026 by stuartelden

Lasse Thomassen, Derrida, Deconstruction and Political Theory – Edinburgh University Press, January 2026

Explores how Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction can help analyse political concepts including justice, democracy, sovereignty, populism and post-truth

  • The first comprehensive study of deconstruction as political theory, showing Jacques Derrida’s relevance for contemporary political theory
  • Demonstrates the usefulness of deconstruction for the study of political concepts such as rights, justice, sovereignty, democracy, populism and post-truth
  • Contrasts a deconstructive approach with other theoretical approaches, including analytic philosophy and critical theory, and with liberal, deliberative, and biopolitical approaches to political concepts
  • Uses extensive examples from contemporary political phenomena such as Covid-19, Donald Trump’s populism and post-truth

Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida and other post-structuralists, this book argues for deconstruction as a distinctive way to practice political theory. Lasse Thomassen shows familiar critiques of deconstruction as relativist and apolitical to be misconceived, and argues for deconstruction as a critical approach to contemporary politics and society. In so doing, the book contrasts deconstruction with other approaches to political theory, including analytic philosophy, critical theory, liberalism, deliberative democracy and biopolitical approaches. 

Developing the argument around political concepts such as rights, justice, sovereignty, democracy and populism, the book combines the deconstructive readings of these political concepts with extensive engagements with contemporary political phenomena such as 9-11, Covid-19, Donald Trump and post-truth.

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Interview – Shirin M. Rai

Posted on February 4, 2026 by stuartelden

Interview – Shirin M. Rai at E-IR

Shirin M. Rai is Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS, University of London. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. Rai’s research interests lie in feminist international political economy, performance and politics, and gender and political institutions. She has published widely in these areas, including Gender and the Political Economy of Development (Polity, 2004) Performing Representation: Women Members in the Indian Parliament (with Carole Spary; OUP), 2019; Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance (2021; co-eds M Gluhovic, S Jestrovic and M Saward). Her latest book is Depletion: the human costs of caring (2024, OUP).

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Omer Aijazi, Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir – University of Pennsylvania Press, June 2024

Posted on February 4, 2026 by stuartelden

Omer Aijazi, Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir – University of Pennsylvania Press, June 2024

Atmospheric Violence grapples with the afterlife of environmental disasters and armed conflict and examines how people attempt to flourish despite and alongside continuing violence. Departing from conventional approaches to the study of disaster and conflict that have dominated academic studies of Kashmir, Omer Aijazi’s ethnography of life in the borderlands instead explores possibilities for imagining life otherwise, in an environment where violence is everywhere, or atmospheric.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the portion of Kashmir under Pakistan’s control and its surrounding mountainscapes, the book takes us to two remote mountainous valleys that have been shaped by recurring environmental disasters, as well as by the landscape of no-go zones, army barracks, and security checkpoints of the contested India/Pakistan border. Through a series of interconnected scenes from the lives of five protagonists, all of whom are precariously situated within their families or societies and rarely enjoy the expected protections of state or community, Aijazi reveals the movements, flows, and intimacies sustained by a landscape that enables alternative modes of life. Blurring the distinctions between story, theory, and activism, he explores what emerges when theory becomes a project of seeing and feeling from the non-normative standpoint of those who, like the book’s protagonists, do not subscribe to the rules by which most others have come to know the world.

Bringing the critical study of disaster into conversation with a radical humanist anthropology and the capaciousness of affect theory, held accountable to Black studies and Indigenous studies, Aijazi offers a decolonial approach to disaster studies centering not on trauma and rupture but rather on repair—the social labor through which communities living with disaster refuse the conditions of death imposed upon them and create viable lives for themselves, even amidst constant diminishment and world-annihilation.

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Matthew Perkins-McVey, Intoxicated Ways of Knowing: The Untold Story of Intoxicants and the Biological Subject in Nineteenth-Century Germany – University of Chicago Press, February 2026

Posted on February 3, 2026 by stuartelden

Matthew Perkins-McVey, Intoxicated Ways of Knowing: The Untold Story of Intoxicants and the Biological Subject in Nineteenth-Century Germany – University of Chicago Press, February 2026

Argues that intoxication was fundamental to German physiological, psychological, and psychiatric research during the nineteenth century.
 
Intoxicating substances can be found lurking in every corner of modern life, and Matthew Perkins-McVey’s pathbreaking book offers the untold story of how they were implicated in shifting perceptions of embodiment found in the emerging sciences of the body and mind in late-nineteenth-century Germany. Their use in this experimental context gave rise to a dynamic conception of the subject within the scientific, psychological, philosophical, and sociological milieu of the era. The history of the modern biological subject, Perkins-McVey argues, turns on “intoxicated ways of knowing.”
 
Intoxicated Ways of Knowing identifies the state of intoxication as a tacit form of thinking and knowing with the body. Intoxicants force us to feel, intervening directly in our perceptional awareness, and, Perkins-McVey contends, they bring latent conceptual associations into the foreground of conscious thought, engendering new ways of knowing the world. The book unfurls how intoxicants affected nineteenth-century German science and how, ultimately, the connection between mental life and intoxication is taken up in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud, bringing the biological subject out of the lab and into the worlds of philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, and politics.

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Nick Srnicek, Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI – Polity, October 2025

Posted on February 2, 2026 by stuartelden

Nick Srnicek, Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI – Polity, October 2025

Since the emergence of ChatGPT, generative AI has been heralded as a technology poised to revolutionize our world. But beyond the hype and hyperbole, who truly wields power over this transformative technology?

In Silicon Empires, Nick Srnicek explores the geopolitical economy of artificial intelligence, revealing how a handful of powerful corporations and states are engaged in a monumental struggle to control its future. Srnicek moves beyond the headlines to lay bare the elaborate strategies that these silicon empires – from tech giants to great powers – are deploying to capture the immense value of AI. This incisive analysis uncovers the deep-seated tensions between corporate ambitions and national interests, and the profound consequences of this new era of technological competition.

As the race for AI supremacy accelerates, Srnicek compellingly demonstrates that the decisions being made in the boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the halls of government will shape the distribution of wealth and power on a global scale for decades to come.

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Roland Barthes’s Seminar on the Metaphor of the Labyrinth, and the presentations by Marcel Detienne, Gilles Deleuze and Pierre Rosenstiehl

Posted on February 1, 2026 by stuartelden

In 1978-79 Roland Barthes held a seminar at the Collège de France on “The Metaphor of the Labyrinth”. It was another spatial theme, after his discussion of territory and territoriality in Comment Vivre Ensemble/How to Live Together the previous year, which I write about here. The seminar on the labyrinth ran alongside his first course on “The Preparation of the Novel”.

Barthes led the first and last sessions of the seminar, on 2 December 1978 and 10 March 1979, but the other sessions were given by guest speakers. In the original edition of the lecture course, La Préparation du roman (I et II), based on his notes, Barthes’s own opening and closing contributions to the seminar are included (pp. 165-79) and they are translated in The Preparation of the Novel (pp. 113-24). Barthes briefly wrote about the seminar in his report on the year’s teaching for the Annuaire du Collège de France, which is also included in the publication of his course (La Préparation du roman (I et II), pp. 459-60; The Preparation of the Novel, p. 378). The seminar notes are not included in the revised edition of La Préparation du roman, which is based on recordings of the lecture course. The other sessions of the seminar have generally not been published at all. They included a presentation by the classicist Marcel Detienne on the labyrinth and the minotaur in Greek mythology on 9 December 1978, and one by Gilles Deleuze on the labyrinth in Nietzsche on 16 December. 

I was curious about those two sessions in particular, mainly because Detienne’s contribution was one of relatively few instances of Barthes showing an interest in classical mythology, although his analysis of modern myths is of course well known. I think his work on modern myth is informed by work in comparative mythology, but this is relatively rarely mentioned by him. Detienne spoke about the famous story of the minotaur who lived in the labyrinth designed by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete. Human sacrifices from Athens were made each year, but Theseus was able to kill the minotaur and navigate his way out of the maze following the thread given to him by the King’s daughter, Ariadne. Detienne would publish on this question in his 1983 article “La Grue et le labyrinthe”, in which he briefly indicates his involvement in Barthes’s seminar (p. 553 n. 61). For a discussion of the mythology, historical and archaeological evidence, I also found an article by Philippe Bourgeaud, “The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King: The Greek Labyrinth in Context”, helpful.

The Deleuze session is also intriguing, because it dates from some time after his famous 1962 book on Nietzsche. As Deleuze’s English editors and translators Charles Stivale and Daniel Smith indicated to me, the key piece published by Deleuze connecting to Nietzsche around the time of the seminar was his introduction to the 1978 French edition of D.H. Lawrence’s Apocalypse, a book which was translated by his wife Fanny Deleuze. This introduction, “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”, was reprinted in his Essays Critical and Clinical in 1993. While a Nietzschean discussion of Lawrence, it doesn’t relate to the seminar’s theme of the labyrinth.

The other presentations to Barthes’s seminar were given by a very interdisciplinary group: the philosopher of aesthetics Hubert Damisch on Egyptian labyrinths and chessboards; by Claire Bernard and Hélène Campan on Russian and Spanish literature; by the film director Pascal Bonitzer on cinema; the lawyer, and later diplomat, Hervé Cassan on the Medina of Fèz; the architectural historian Françoise Choay; Jean-Louis Bouttes, who published his La Destructeur d’intensité in 1979, and would go on to write a book on Jung, on Labyrinths and ruses (and on whom see this piece by Blake Smith); the mathematician Pierre Rosenstiehl; and the psychoanalyst Octave Mannoni on labyrinths and enunciation.

As the end of the report on the seminar Barthes says:

After listening to such very different presentations, it was noted that the Labyrinth is perhaps a ‘pseudo’ metaphor in the sense that its form is so particular, so pregnant, the literal meaning predominates over the symbolic: the Labyrinth engenders narratives, not images. The seminar ended not with a conclusion but with a new question: not ‘What is a Labyrinth?’ nor indeed ‘How do you get out of one?’ but rather ‘Where does a Labyrinth begin?’ In this way, the seminar shares an affinity with what would appear to be a timely epistemology of degrees of consistency, of thresholds, intensities (La Préparation du roman (I et II), p. 460; The Preparation of the Novel, p. 378).

The Barthes archive at the Bibliothèque nationale de France contains some materials relating to the seminar. Box 31, folders 5-8 has some correspondence from attendees and presenters; Barthes’s own texts, written out by him and transcribed for the publication; some photocopies of texts on the labyrinth theme, and related material. The transcription of the opening and closing session of the seminar is complete, including a small note taped to p. 2 of the Introduction, reproduced as the note on p. 166/428 n. 2, in which he is critical of Paolo Santarcangeli’s recently translated Le livre des labyrinthes: histoire d’un mythe et d’un symbole. “Quite a confused book, primarily an archaeological and ethnological dossier; very little on the symbolic, and banal, we’ll come back to this”. He clearly used the book a lot, though, with marginal page references in his own notes for the seminar marked as ‘S’. Detienne reviewed the book in 1980 – a brief review which says little about the book but makes some interesting comments on Greek myth.

Roland Barthes, The Preparation of the Novel
Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical

Barthes took brief notes on the presentations by others to this seminar, which are contained in a yellow Gibert Joseph notebook in folder 7. Unfortunately, there are only about a page of notes per presentation, which are therefore very abbreviated. There is one letter from Detienne, but nothing from Deleuze. Folder 8 also contain a typescript of a text by Rosenstiehl, “Les mots du labyrinthe”, which he published in 1980 in a collection edited by the Centre Pompidou, Cartes et figures de la terre. On the first page of the typescript it says that this was the presentation made to the seminar, with an accompanying letter to Barthes dated to 6 February 1980. The published version has some reproduced images and drawings by Augustin and Agnès Rosenstiehl. 

From Barthes’s notes, it seems that Deleuze’s presentation concerned the labyrinth in Nietzsche’s work and the relation between the labyrinth and the ear. These ideas are close to material he discussed in his 1962 book on Nietzsche. The first key passage is:

Every truth is truth of an element, of a time and a place: the minotaur does not leave the labyrinth (VP III 408). We are not going to think unless as we are forced to go where the forces which give food for thought are, where the forces that make thought something active and affirmative are made use of. Thought does not need a method but a paideia, a formation, a culture. Method in general is a means by which we avoid going to a particular place, or by which we maintain the option of escaping from it (the thread of the labyrinth). “And we, we beg you earnestly, hang yourselves with this thread!” Nietzsche says that three anecdotes are sufficient to define the life of a thinker (PTG) – one for the place, one for the time and one for the element. The anecdote is to life what the aphorism is to thought: something to interpret. Empedocles and his volcano – this is an anecdote of a thinker. The height of summits and caves, the labyrinths; midday-midnight; the halcyon aerial element and also the element of the subterranean. It is up to us to go to extreme places, to extreme times, where the highest and the deepest truths live and rise up. The places of thought are the tropical zones frequented by the tropical man, not temperate zones or the moral, methodical or moderate man (Nietzsche et la philosophie, pp. 125-26; Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 110).

The quotations are from the French edition of The Will to Power and Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. The second relevant passage from Deleuze’s book reads:

3) The labyrinth or the ears. The labyrinth is a frequent image in Nietzsche. It designates firstly the unconscious, the self; only the Anima is capable of reconciling us with the unconscious, of giving us a guiding thread for its exploration. In the second place, the labyrinth designates the eternal return itself: circular, it is not the lost way but the way which leads us back to the same point, to the same instant which is, which was and which will be. But, more profoundly, from the perspective of the constitution of the eternal return, the labyrinth is becoming, the affirmation of becoming. Being comes from becoming, it is affirmed of becoming itself, in as much as the affirmation of becoming is the object of another affirmation (Ariadne’s thread). As long as Ariadne remained with Theseus the labyrinth was interpreted the wrong way round, it opened out onto higher values, the thread was the thread of the negative and ressentiment, the moral thread. But Dionysus teaches Ariadne his secret: the true labyrinth is Dionysus himself, the true thread is the thread of affirmation. “I am your labyrinth.” Dionysus is the labyrinth and bull, becoming and being, but becoming is only being insofar as its affirmation is itself affirmed. Dionysus not only asks Ariadne to hear but to affirm affirmation: “You have little ears, you have my ears: put a shrewd word there.” The ear is labyrinthine, the ear is the labyrinth of becoming or the maze of affirmation. The labyrinth is what leads us to being, the only being is that of becoming, the only being is that of the labyrinth itself. But Ariadne has Dionysus’ ears: affirmation must itself be affirmed so that it can be the affirmation of being. Ariadne puts a shrewd word into Dionysus’ ear. That is to say: having herself heard Dionysian affirmation, she makes it the object of a second affirmation heard by Dionysus (Nietzsche et la philosophie, pp. 215-16; Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 188).

The quotations here are from Nietzsche’s poem “Ariadne’s Complaint” in Dionysian Dithyrambs (adapted from text originally in Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

These themes are developed by Deleuze in a 1963 article “The Mystery of Ariadne”, which was reprinted in 1987, revised in 1992 and included in Essays Critical and Clinical. (Timothy S. Murphy’s bibliography indicates the references.) It seems Barthes’s seminar was an occasion to return to themes in a book and article from about fifteen years before. It would be interesting to know if Deleuze had additional notes for his presentation or if there is a recording somewhere. It’s not listed in the extremely useful records of The Deleuze seminars.

Barthes died in March 1980, and while he delivered 11 lectures of the second course on “The Preparation of the Novel”, his planned seminar for that academic year, on Proust and photography, did not take place. It was due to begin in February 1980, and apparently Barthes had gone to the Collège to check on the slide projector he planned to use shortly before he was hit by a laundry van on the road outside. This led to his hospitalisation, from which he never recovered. The introductory text and the preparatory notes he made on the photographs for this seminar are included in the original Préparation volume (pp. 385-457/pp. 305-75). The same text and images are also included in the posthumous Marcel Proust volume (pp. 167-237). Kathrin Yacavone has written an interesting study of this seminar, and is my source for the story about the slide projector and subsequent accident (p. 110 n. 3).

I’m not sure other presenters developed their work into published texts beyond those I’ve indicated here. Rosenstiehl also wrote another piece on the labyrinth, published in the Barthes tribute issue of Critique in 1982, which was translated for October in 1983. It’s interesting that, already having published his contribution to the seminar, he returned to this theme in homage. He mentions the seminar, and those who were “invited ‘to witness his words’” (“Le dodécadédale ou l’éloge de l’heuristique”, p. 793 n. 3; “The ‘Dodécadédale’, or in Praise of Heuristics”, p. 24 n.3):

The goal of the seminar on the labyrinth, the last seminar, which Barthes had twice postponed, was one we all shared: an attempt to isolate some aspects of a method of research. Nothing seemed better to suggest research than writing (in the act of being written) or Ariadne’s thread (as it is unwound). Questioning our own heuristic proceedings is certainly an ambitious undertaking! The method adopted was that of allowing the imagination to speak freely about the metaphors that might convey the labyrinth…

The seminar gathers all the delusions into a heap. The distillations of all the sciences are brought into the labyrinth. Yet Barthes remains dazzled by his stochastic anxiety: ‘The labyrinth is the typical form of the nightmare’. The last seminar at the Collège is swathed in the labyrinth’s deepest layers (“Le dodécadédale ou l’éloge de l’heuristique”, pp. 793-95; “The ‘Dodécadédale’, or in Praise of Heuristics”, pp. 24-25).

The exploration of the labyrinth – as architectural form, as metaphor, in mythology and the present moment, in music, art, mathematics and thought – seems to have remained an undeveloped fragment of Barthes’s work, even if others in the seminar would publish on these themes. 

Update 2 February 2026: Adrian Paul Martin and Patrick ffrench both helpfully comment below that Pascal Bonitzer’s presentation to this seminar was published – “Cinéma et labyrinthe: la vision partielle”, Cahiers du cinéma 301, 1979), 35-41; “Partial Vision: Film and the Labyrinth”, trans Fabrice Ziolkowski, Wide Angle 4 (4), 1981, 56-63.

References

Roland Barthes, Comment Vivre Ensemble: Simulations Romanesques de quelques espaces quotidiens: Notes de cours et de séminaires au Collège de France, 1976-1977, ed. Claude Coste, Paris: Seuil/IMEC, 2002; How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces, trans. Kate Briggs, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

Roland Barthes, La Préparation du roman (I et II): Cours et séminaires au Collège de France (1978-1979 et 1979-1980), ed. Nathalie Léger, Paris: Seuil, 2003; The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture Courses and Seminars at the Collège de France (1978-1979 and 1979-1980), trans. Kate Briggs, New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.

Roland Barthes, La Préparation du roman: Cours au Collège de France (1978-1979 et 1979-1980), ed. Nathalie Léger and Éric Marty, Paris: Seuil Points, 2019 [2015].

Roland Barthes, Marcel Proust: Mélanges, ed. Bernard Comment, Paris: Seuil, 2020.

Philippe Bourgeaud, “The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King: The Greek Labyrinth in Context”, History of Religions 14 (1), 1974, 1-27.

Jean-Louis Bouttes, La Destructeur d’intensité, Paris: Seuil, 1979.

Jean-Louis Bouttes, Jung: La Puissance de l’illusion, Paris: Seuil, 1990.

Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie, Paris: PUF, 1962; Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson, London: Athlone, 1983.  

Gilles Deleuze, “Mystère d’Ariane selon Nietzsche”, in Critique et clinique, Paris: Minuit, 1993, 126-34 (developed from an essay first published in Bulletin de la Société français d’études nietzschéennes, 1963, 12-15); “The Mystery of Ariadne according to Nietzsche”, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, London: Verso, 1998, 99-106.

Gilles Deleuze, “Nietzsche et Saint Paul, Lawrence et Jean de Patmos”, in D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse, trans. Fanny Deleuze, Paris: Desjonquères, 2002 [1978], 11-39, reprinted in Critique et clinique, Paris: Minuit, 1993, 50-70;“Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, London: Verso, 1998, 36-52.

Marcel Detienne, “Santarcangeli (Paolo) Le Livre des labyrinthes: Histoire d’un mythe et d’un symbole (1967)”, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 50 (2), 1980. 338.

Marcel Detienne, “La Grue et le labyrinthe”, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome, 95 (2), 1983, 541-53.

D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse, trans. Fanny Deleuze, Paris: Desjonquères, 2002 [1978].

Pierre Rosenstiehl, “Les mots du labyrinthe”, Cartes et figures de la terre, Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1980, 94-103.

Pierre Rosenstiehl, “Le dodécadédale ou l’éloge de l’heuristique”, Critique 423-24, 1982, 785-96; “The ‘Dodécadédale’, or in Praise of Heuristics”, trans. Thomas Repensek, October 26, 1983, 17-26.

Paolo Santarcangeli, Le livre des labyrinthes: Histoire d’un mythe et d’un symbole, trans. Monique Lacau, Paris: Gallimard, 1974.

Blake Smith, “J-L Bouttes’ ‘Intensity Destroyer’”, 8 May 2023, https://blakeesmith.substack.com/p/j-l-bouttes-intensity-destroyer

Kathrin Yacavone, “Reading through Photography: Roland Barthes’s Last Seminar ‘Proust et la photographie’”, French Forum 34 (1), 2009, 97-112.

Archives

Fonds Roland Barthes, Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAF 28630, box 31.

This is the 57th post of a weekly series, posted every Sunday throughout 2025, and now entering a second year. The posts are short essays with indications of further reading and sources. They are not as formal as something I’d try to publish more conventionally, but are hopefully worthwhile as short sketches of histories and ideas. They are usually tangential to my main writing focus, a home for spare parts, asides, dead-ends and possible futures. I hope there is some interest in them. They are provisional and suggestions are welcome. A few, usually shorter, pieces in a similar style have been posted mid-week. I’m not sure I’ll keep to a weekly rhythm in 2026, but there will be at least a few more pieces.

The full chronological list of ‘Sunday histories’ is here, with a thematic ordering here.

Posted in Gilles Deleuze, Marcel Detienne, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories | 4 Comments

Sara B. Pritchard, Transforming Night: The History and Science of Light Pollution – University of Washington Press, July 2026

Posted on January 31, 2026 by stuartelden

Sara B. Pritchard, Transforming Night: The History and Science of Light Pollution – University of Washington Press, July 2026

Darkness has become legible—and contested. Blending archival narrative with on-the-ground ethnography, Sara B. Pritchard traces how four fields—astronomy, remote sensing, conservation science, and ecology—have investigated artificial light at night, turning a ubiquitous convenience into a category of harm. From observatories chasing ever-receding darkness to the satellite images that first rendered a nocturnal planet from space and recent “Black Marble” maps, Pritchard shows how methods, instruments, and field sites shape what scientists can know about night and light—and what remains unseen.

Across these encounters, night emerges not as a backdrop but as an environment in its own right—one transformed by rapidly expanding, brightening illumination in the Anthropocene. The book chronicles the ascent of “light pollution,” as well as the new challenge of space-based brightness from satellite constellations, even as dark-sky advocates fight to preserve the starry firmament. Attentive to politics as much as photons, Pritchard brings environmental justice to the fore—highlighting tensions among light poverty, forced illumination, and surveillance and calls for “beneficial darkness.” She takes seriously Indigenous astronomers’ critiques of dispossession and “astro-colonialism,” asking what it means to site world-class telescopes on sacred land.

Sweeping from local parks to planetary vistas, Transforming Night reframes a familiar story of modern light as a history of changing nights—past, present, and possible. It will engage readers in environmental history and humanities, science and technology studies, and the sciences themselves, along with dark-sky activists and anyone drawn to the beauty and politics of the world after nightfall.

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