Yesterday I posted this picture on Twitter, asking who the three middle figures were – left to right, Boulez, Barthes, ?, ?, ?, Foucault and Deleuze. The photo was taken from Monoskop, which says it was taken at IRCAM, Paris, in February 1978.

[Update: see below for details, but it is Boulez, Barthes, Jean-Claude Risset, Gerald Bennett, Michel Decoust, Foucault, Deleuze]

I said that I thought the person next to Barthes was the composer Jean-Claude Risset, and @BarthesStudies suggested that the composer and conductor Michel Decoust was next to Foucault. But they also indicated that this was a cropped version of a larger picture, found in Marie Gil’s biography of Barthes, or at Getty Images:

This includes another figure I don’t recognise.

So, that would mean – unknown, Boulez, Barthes, Risset, unknown, Decoust, Foucault, Deleuze.

Anyone help with the other two people?

[Update: see below for details, but it is Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, Roland Barthes, Jean-Claude Risset, Gerald Bennett, Michel Decoust, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze]

Alistair Leadbetter has suggested that Elliott Carter and Gerald Bennett may be the two others. The conference programme is here – medias.ircam.fr/xcd4f03 which lists Bennett, Risset and Decoust. Carter’s work was featured in a concert immediately before the conference.