Mostly bought second-hand, but also the new translation of Foucault’s early courses on sexuality from Columbia University Press. My endorsement is on the website but didn’t make the cut for the back cover.
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Julia should have stuck to non-fiction.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2021/sep/06/the-last-humanist-how-paul-gilroy-became-the-most-vital-guide-to-our-age-of-crisis-podcast
That seems a bit unfair – I’ve only read The Samurai of her fiction, but this is clearly a thinly-disguised memoir and a valuable insight into that period.
well matters of taste and all so fair enough, and I take your point about the memoirish aspects but then it would have been better to just have a straight account as I see it.
I don’t know, but I wonder if being explicit about who everyone was might have caused problems. Many characters are fairly obvious equivalents to well-known people, but not everyone was obvious to me.
don’t know what the reception in France was like but imagine it was clear enough to people who were interested in knowing who was who, but is this now the record of that time? does raise more interesting/general questions about how comprehensive can any account be intentionally fictional or otherwise.
Yes, I imagine it was pretty clear to people. I’m not sure it’s an entirely reliable record, though the description of Benveniste’s illness, for example, is very close to what Kristeva has said elsewhere in an interview. I would certainly be careful in how I use it, but interesting nonetheless.