Explores the psychoanalytic dynamics linking democracy and populism in the Yellow Vests movement
Bridges political theory and psychoanalysis in a striking interdisciplinary account of the Yellow Vests
Drawing on unique psychosocial interviews with grassroots protesters, it reveals how personal stories erupted into collective mobilisation
Makes psychoanalytic ideas—desire, fantasy, enjoyment, symptom—tangible through vivid empirical examples tested in the classroom
Recasts populism as aesthetic transgression, bringing Lacanian theory into dialogue with radical democracy
The Yellow Vests movement (‘Les gilets jaunes’) occupied roundabouts across France in late 2018 and remains a puzzling phenomenon. Bringing together protestors across the political spectrum, the movement’s democratic character remains ambiguous. Was this populist uprising a radicalisation of democracy that gave voice to the excluded, or an undemocratic claim to speak for “the people” while entrenching hierarchies?
Radical Democracy, Populism and Desire articulates empirical analysis and theoretical reflection, using the Yellow Vests as a prism to rethink democratic theory. Drawing on psychosocial interviews with grassroots participants, it explores how identities were constructed, contested and steered within the movement. Thomás Zicman de Barros argues that the protests were driven by a desire for recognition and belonging, but that this desire could be mobilised in sharply different directions. By tracing these coexisting modes of identification, the book exposes the fraught and ambiguous ties between populism and democracy in contemporary politics.
Presents a new interpretation of Machiavelli’s recovery of ancient religion and its role in establishing a modern form of republicanism
Presents a new interpretation of Machiavelli’s idea of religion and its political uses
Explains the role of ancient theology in the Italian Renaissance and explains the tensions with Christianity
Displays a complex picture of how Platonism and Aristotelianism, mediated by medieval Arabic, Jewish and Byzantine interpretations, were deployed in the culture wars of Italian Renaissance
Defends a republican conception of constitutionalism that is neither oligarchic nor populist
Machiavellianism and Platonism are traditionally opposed, as realism is to idealism, and might is to right. This book questions this opposition, arguing that Machiavelli is far more influenced by Platonism than by Epicureanism. The Platonism at the time of the Medici is marked by the reception of Arabic/Islamic and Byzantine interpretations of Plato. These portray Platonism as an expression of an “ancient theology” that offers an alternative to Christianity by undoing a stark opposition between faith and knowledge; emphasising the political and state-founding role of prophets; affirming the continuity between humans and animals; and defending the rationality of divine and human law. Miguel Vatter contends that from these alternative approaches to Platonism, Machiavelli draws a critique of both the Catholic Church and of Humanism, rejecting their oligarchic tendencies in favour of a radical form of republicanism.
Michel Foucault had a long friendship with the comparative mythologist and linguist Georges Dumézil. As well as providing invaluable support for Foucault’s career, Dumézil was also important to Foucault intellectually, as Didier Eribon was the first to discuss in detail, both in his biography of Foucault and also in Michel Foucault et ses contemporains.
There follows a chronological list of the letters, postcards and other notes between Georges Dumézil and Michel Foucault which I have seen in various archives. I did most of the work for my own research on Foucault and now on Dumézil, and thought it was possible someone else might find it helpful.
Foucault kept letters from Dumézil in different places, and they were deposited at the Bibliothèque nationale de France at various times, which explains why they are in different parts of his archives. Dumézil seems to have kept fewer letters, some of which are in his archives at the Collège de France, but he (or his archivists) often kept or organised correspondence with teaching materials for that academic year, or with material relating to his books, and I’m sure I will have missed some. A few of the dedications of Dumézil’s books to Foucault are dated, so I’ve included those which I’ve seen. Some of the letters from Foucault to Dumézil are in a private collection, not accessible to researchers.
While certainly an incomplete record, I’ve listed the letters I know about in order, adding a few years which seem likely or possible given other information – for example where they are sent from, or the content. A few I’ve been unable to date more specifically given limited information. Foucault’s handwriting can be unclear, and Dumézil’s is often very difficult to read, but I think what I’ve listed here is accurate.
The letters are especially revealing at the start, in the mid-1950s, when Dumézil first contacted Foucault to see if he would be interested in a post in Uppsala, combining teaching French literature and running cultural events at the Maison de France. Dumézil had held the same position twenty years before, and had been asked by them for a recommendation. Eribon discusses this in his biography of Foucault, and others, including David Macey in The Lives of Michel Foucault and my The Early Foucault have discussed it since. Eribon quotes passages from some other letters from Foucault to Dumézil, especially in the third French edition of his biography and in Michel Foucault et ses contemporains.
Many of the later letters are arranging times and places to meet, and don’t often go into much detail about their respective writing projects or ideas. They shift quickly from the formal ‘vous’ to the informal ‘tu’. They became extremely close – Foucault addresses Dumézil as ‘dear father’ and Dumézil Foucault as ‘my son’ and similar. There are not many letters from periods when they were both based in Paris – the bulk of the letters I’ve seen are from Foucault’s time abroad in Uppsala, Warsaw and Hamburg in the second half of the 1950s; or when Dumézil was away, often doing his linguistic fieldwork in Istanbul, or in visiting posts elsewhere. Foucault continued to live in Paris when he taught at Clermont-Ferrand, and was back in Paris regularly when teaching in Tunisia. Dumézil sent some letters from his second home, in the village of Vernon in Eure, Normandy.
Some of the late 1960s letters were when Dumézil was supporting Foucault’s attempt to get elected to the Collège de France, writing from Chicago to persuade a few people, and keeping a note of how he thought votes might go. There appear to be gaps and nothing after 1971, but this may simply be a result of where letters were kept, if they were retained at all, or using telephone more frequently. Dumézil travelled very little after 1972, and they lived less than two miles from each other in Paris.
There is also a handwritten copy in Foucault’s archive of Dumézil’s tribute, published in Le Nouvel observateur on 29 June 1984, a few days after Foucault’s death (NAF 28804). This mentions both the initial contact around the Uppsala post and the later support for his Collège de France election. I assume Dumézil must have shared this text with Daniel Defert, who put it with the correspondence. I don’t think this short text, reproduced as an image in Eribon’s biography of Foucault, and below, has been translated. Dumézil there describes their friendship as one which knew “neither shadow nor rupture” for thirty years.
Georges Dumézil, “Un Homme Heureux”, Le Nouvel observateur, 29 June 1984
Dumézil dedicates one of the essays added to Du mythe au roman in 1970 to Foucault, and agreed that his Entretiens avec Didier Eribon should be dedicated “to the memory of Michel Foucault”. It was published in 1987, the year after his own death.
All sent from Paris or with place not noted, unless another place is stated.
Dumézil to Foucault, 15 October 1954, Bangor, Wales – NAF 28004; cited in Eribon, Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, 110-11.
Foucault to Dumézil, 22 October 1954 – private collection; cited in Eribon, Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, 111; enclosed cv part-cited on 112.
Dumézil to Foucault, 25 October 1954, Bangor – NAF 28004
Foucault to Dumézil, 29 October 1954 – private collection
Dumézil to Foucault, 12 November 1954, London – NAF 28004
Foucault to Dumézil, 7 December [1954] – private collection
Foucault to Dumézil, 21 December [1954] – private collection
Foucault to Dumézil, 1 January 1955 – private collection
Dumézil to Foucault, 3 January 1955 – NAF 28004
Dumézil to Foucault, 5 January 1955 – NAF 28804
Foucault to Dumézil, 11 January [1955] – private collection
Dumézil to Foucault, 8 February 1955 – NAF 28803, box 5, folder 3
Foucault to Dumézil, 27 February [1955] – private collection
Dumézil to Foucault, 11 March 1955 – NAF 28803, box 5, folder 3
Foucault to Dumézil, 12 March 1955, unsent/copy – previously in NAF 28803, box 5, folder 1
Dumézil to Foucault, 27 June 1955 – NAF 28803, box 5, folder 3
Dumézil to Foucault, 5 September 1955 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 25 September 1955, Istanbul – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 25 April 1956, Bangor – NAF 29070, box 1
Dumézil to Foucault, 9 May 1956 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 12 May 1956 – NAF 29005, box 4
Dumézil to Foucault, 30 June 1956, Bangor – NAF 29070, box 1
Dumézil to Foucault, 3 September 1956, London – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 8 September 1956, London – NAF 29005, box 4
Dumézil to Foucault, 26 September 1956, Oslo – NAF 29005, box 4
Dumézil to Foucault, jeudi soir, 27 September [1956?], Oslo – NAF 28804 [GD certainly gave a lecture in Oslo in 1956, 27 September 1956 was a Thursday, and the letter mentions visiting Uppsala]
Dumézil to Foucault, 22 October 1956, dedication in Déesses latins et mythes védiques, Bruxelles: Latomus, 1956 – BEIN 604
[Mme Madéleine?] Dumézil to Foucault, 29 November 1956 – NAF 29070, box 1
Dumézil to Foucault, 2 December 1956 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 15 December 1956 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 14 May 1957 – NAF 29005, box 4
Foucault to Dumézil, 29 May [1957] – private collection; part-cited in Eribon, Michel Foucault, 3rd edition, 147.
Dumézil to Foucault, 22 July 1957, Istanbul – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 22 November 1957 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 23 November 1957 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 27 November 1957 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 20 January 1958 – NAF 28804
Foucault to Dumézil, 23 February [1958?] – private collection [mentions the death of Faral, Edmond Faral, administrator of the Collège de France, died on 8 February 1958, and Dumézil’s forthcoming 60th birthday]
Dumézil to Foucault, 10 March 1958 – NAF 29070, box 1
Dumézil to Foucault, 16 April 1958 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 4 May 1958 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 7 May 1958 – NAF 29005, box 4
Dumézil to Foucault, 10 May 1958 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 18 May 1958 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 22 June 1958, Istanbul – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 1 Sept 1958, Vernon – NAF 29070, box 1
Dumézil to Foucault, 12 September 1958, Vernon – NAF 28804
Foucault to Dumézil, 14 September [1958], Uppsala – private collection
Dumézil to Foucault, 2 October 1958 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 4 May 1959 – NAF 28804
Foucault to Dumézil, 16 November [1958] – part-cited in Eribon, Michel Foucault,3rd edition, 154.
Dumézil to Foucault, 18 November 1958 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 13 May 1959 – NAF 28804
Foucault to Dumézil, 18 June [1959] – DMZ 75, folder 25
Foucault to Dumézil, 18 May [1960?] – DMZ 75, folder 25
Foucault to Dumézil, [30 September 1961] – cited in Eribon, Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, 164-65
Foucault to Dumézil, 10 December [1962] – DMZ 75, folder 25
Dumézil to Foucault, 1 March 1963 – NAF 29070, box 1
Dumézil to Foucault, postcard from Istanbul, 26 May 1963 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 26 June 1963, Istanbul – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 24 September 1964 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 15 November 1969, Chicago – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 4 December 1969 – NAF 28804. This appears to have been sent with an additional page, dated 7 December 1969 – NAF 28804.
Dumézil to Foucault, postcard from Chicago, 31 December 1969 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, postcard from Los Angeles, 5 March 1971 – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, April 1971, dedication in Mythe et épopée II, Gallimard, 1971– BEIN 610
Dumézil to Foucault, 1 March 1977, dedication in Les Dieux souverains des Indo-Européens, 1977 – BEIN 605
Part-dated or Undated
Dumézil to Foucault, Copenhagen, jeudi midi – NAF 28804 [possibly 27 September 1956?]
Dumézil to Foucault, 7 January [no year] – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, Vernon, 11 April [no year] – NAF 28804
Dumézil to Foucault, 18 Sept [1959 or 1960?], Vernon – NAF 29070, box 1
Dumézil to Foucault, undated – NAF 28804
Foucault to Dumézil, 10 November [no year] – private collection
Foucault to Dumézil, 25 November [1955?], Uppsala – private collection
This is the 84th post of a weekly series, posted every Sunday throughout 2025, and continuing into a second year. The posts are short essays with indications of further reading and sources. Some, like this one, are also research resources like some other pieces on this site. The pieces 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 wasn’t sure I’d keep to a weekly rhythm throughout 2026, but have ideas for at least a few more pieces.
The full chronological list of ‘Sunday histories’ is here, with a thematic ordering here.
How the UK’s largest international airport remade a local landscape
Aviationland is the first critical study to examine how a major international airport takes shape on the ground, and what that means for the landscape around it. Focused on Heathrow airport, it traces how the area has been formed and reformed by overlapping systems of architecture, infrastructure and enclosure, from the common land of Hounslow Heath in the eighteenth century to the global transport hub of the present day.
The book explores the different forces that have shaped the airport’s environment: the remaking of landforms, the design of terminal buildings, and the surrounding sprawl of hotels, schools, factories, and business parks. At the same time, it shows how the Heathrow area has been moulded by wider shifts in energy, mobility, and the economy, and how the airport has in turn left a lasting mark on its surroundings, both materially and ecologically.
Drawing on previously unpublished material, Aviationland includes close studies of key sites, as well as figures who shaped how we see the airport today, including Richard Rogers, Patrick Abercrombie, and J. G. Ballard. Bringing together architectural, landscape, and infrastructural histories that are seldom read in tandem, this volume makes the case for Heathrow as a distinctively modern landscape. The result is a nuanced account of how local places become entangled within global systems, and what happens when they do.
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world’s most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage.
Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing.
Huey P. Newton was called many things in his time: revolutionary, genius, criminal, even the most surveilled human being in world history. Yet, little of the truth about him is known today due to persistent distortions of his legacy as co-founder of the Black Panther Party.
In this much-needed intellectual history, Delio Vásquez establishes Newton as a true philosopher. Newton developed innovative theories for how the most oppressed could spearhead revolutionary change in a rapidly developing technological society. Inspired by his ideas, the Panthers forged alliances with Black student unions and street gangs, Hollywood elites and poor whites, the gay liberation movement and Third World nations.
Newton left behind dozens of unpublished manuscripts analyzing politics, feminist thought, education, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and theology – texts presented here for the first time. Vásquez also puts into proper perspective Newton’s late descent into addiction and madness – a direct effect of US government techniques of cognitive war that targeted his body and mind in ways that remain all too relevant today.
This timely book examines how media reporting of extreme weather events informs and influences the public perception of climate change. Phil McManus argues that media reporting has changed over time, varies between places, is influenced by political stance and must improve if we are to avoid the worst aspects of anthropogenic climate change.
Case studies of media coverage of extreme heat, wildfires and floods from around the world demonstrate that while attribution science is identifying the influence of climate change in disasters, this is not always conveyed via media. Incorporating scientific knowledge and philosophical approaches to living with climate, the book identifies how everyday reporting of weather should include references to the influence of climate change where appropriate.
This book is a valuable resource for scholars and students of geography, sociology, environmental management and media and communication. It will also benefit practitioners reporting on weather, climate scientists and urban planning specialists who are seeking more information on the role of public perception in the climate crisis.
Le 3 juin 1835, un jeune paysan normand, Pierre Rivière, égorge sa mère, sa sœur et son frère avant de s’enfuir. Arrêté le mois suivant, il rédige, dans l’attente de son jugement, un Mémoire d’une cinquantaine de feuillets pour expliquer son geste. Condamné à mort, puis gracié, c’est-à-dire emprisonné à vie, il se suicide dans sa cellule en 1840. De cette affaire, il nous reste ce Mémoire très détaillé, redécouvert au début des années 1970 par Michel Foucault qui, entouré d’une petite équipe, en produisit l’édition. Jeanne Favret-Saada avait participé à cette entreprise éditoriale, qui se refusait à toute interprétation savante pour laisser la pleine page au jeune homme. Dans le présent ouvrage, l’anthropologue revient sur ce qui s’est joué en 1835 – des élites donnant la parole à un « subalterne » que son acte jugeait d’avance –, mais en s’attachant au fond de l’affaire : quelle suite d’événements a conduit Pierre Rivière à ce triple meurtre ? Contre l’interprétation qui réduit ce Mémoire à un discours psychotique, elle propose qu’on le soumette à une enquête qui conjoigne l’ethnologie et l’histoire. Elle examine ainsi les vingt-deux ans d’une vie familiale impossible, Victoire Rivière ayant refusé d’emblée la plupart des devoirs de l’épouse. Le mariage était alors régi par le Code civil napoléonien, pleinement confirmé par la coutume locale en matière de domination masculine. L’analyse serrée des péripéties rapportées par l’assassin montre alors les raisons de son geste meurtrier.
Thanks to Foucault News and Keanu Heydari for the links.
Through newly transcribed and translated lectures, Deleuze explores Spinoza’s philosophy concerning questions of good and evil and humanity’s potential for realizing a full life
Available for the first time in English, On Spinoza presents the annotated transcripts of Gilles Deleuze’s fifteen seminars on the seventeenth-century philosopher’s Ethics, delivered at the experimental University of Vincennes at the behest of Michel Foucault. Spinoza’s ambitious treatise was central to Deleuze’s thought, and his course provides an accessible framework for understanding the vitality of Spinoza’s philosophy.
In an informal classroom setting, Deleuze addresses fundamental aspects of Spinoza’s thought: How does one undo the negativity of harmful passions such as hate, resentment, and envy? How can a system of moral judgment based on good and evil be replaced by a more sophisticated ethics of the good and the bad? And since such questions commit Spinoza to a new theory of signs, Deleuze also delves into his thinking on how these signs should guide human existence and the differences between concepts of eternity, experienced in the here and now, and the immortality promised by philosophy and religion.
Building gradually from session to session, Deleuze shows how Spinoza rejects a hierarchical reality dominated by an authoritarian and impenetrable God, instead proposing a world ruled by light and reason in which all beings are equal. Annotated by David Lapoujade and including recorded exchanges with Deleuze’s students, On Spinoza offers a rare window into Deleuze’s teaching, offering readers a guide for linking Spinoza to other philosophers—including Deleuze himself.
I wrote about Ginzburg in a recent piece here; and am planning one on Suzanne Bachelard, Gaston’s daughter. I’ll be teaching Althusser and Mbembe in the autumn.
