Category Archives: Books

Books received – Simon, Macciocchi, Spinney, Kristeva, Leray, Mallory

Posted on May 9, 2026 by stuartelden

John K. Simon, Modern French Criticism; Maria-Antoinetta Macciocchi, Les femmes et leurs maîtres; Laura Spinney, Proto; Julia Kristeva, Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death; a special issue on Jean Leray; Ryan L. Allen, Adventures in the Archaic and J.P. Mallory, … Continue reading →

Posted in Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault | Leave a comment

Lucien Gerschel bibliography (and other research resources)

Posted on May 5, 2026 by stuartelden

I’ve written about Lucien Gerschel in two posts in my ‘Sunday Histories‘ series – Lucien Gerschel, Georges Dumézil, William Shakespeare and the history of Coriolanus and The Tragic Death of Lucien Gerschel and his Posthumous Text on the Finnish Sampo. He was a student … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Lucien Gerschel, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | Leave a comment

The Tragic Death of Lucien Gerschel and his Posthumous Text on the Finnish Sampo

Posted on April 26, 2026 by stuartelden

In a previous piece in this series, I discussed Georges Dumézil’s student and colleague Lucien Gerschel and their discussions of the Roman general Coriolanus. Gerschel had attended lectures by Dumézil at the École Pratique des Hautes Études shortly before the Second World War. … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Lucien Gerschel, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | 2 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 32 – trying to improve a draft

Posted on April 20, 2026 by stuartelden

As I said in the last update, I went to the EUI in Florence at the beginning of February with a nearly complete draft of my manuscript on Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France, and had the plan to leave at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Emile Benveniste, Fernand Braudel, Georges Dumézil, Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories, Travel, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Julia Kristeva’s portrait of Émile Benveniste in The Samurai

Posted on April 19, 2026 by stuartelden

Julia Kristeva’s first novel The Samurai was published in 1990. It’s not the greatest novel, but it’s well known that the book is a thinly disguised autobiography, with the central character Olga Morena modelled on herself. Many of the famous names of … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Georges Redard and the Linguistic Atlas of Iranian Speakers

Posted on April 12, 2026 by stuartelden

After Émile Benveniste suffered a major stroke in late 1969, his former student and friend Georges Redard planned to publish some of Benveniste’s incomplete projects. Redard was by this time teaching at the University of Bern in Switzerland. One volume … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Maurice Blanchot’s Politics and His War-Time Reviews of Georges Dumézil

Posted on April 5, 2026 by stuartelden

The philosopher, literary theorist and novelist Maurice Blanchot’s politics have come under periodic scrutiny. Leslie Hill describes the source of the controversy:  As early as 1931 and 1932, while starting out with the Journal des débats, Blanchot was writing political articles … Continue reading →

Posted in Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Georges Dumézil, Jean-Paul Sartre, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Maurice Blanchot, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Foucault’s 1972 visit to Attica prison

Posted on March 29, 2026 by stuartelden

In April 1972, during his second teaching visit to SUNY Buffalo, Michel Foucault visited Attica prison. The two visits to Buffalo are important for his teaching, which I discuss briefly here and in more detail in a piece in Foucault Studies. Leonhard Riep discusses … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault: The Birth of Power, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Seeing the cover of The Birth of Territory

Posted on March 28, 2026 by stuartelden

Last weekend, I finally got to see the painting used for the cover of my book The Birth of Territory for the first time. It’s in the Palazzo d’Accursio in Bologna. The painting is by Luigi Serra, Irnerio che glossa … Continue reading →

Posted in My Publications, Territory, The Birth of Territory | Leave a comment

The Books on Territory I Didn’t Write, and the Related Articles I Did

Posted on March 15, 2026 by stuartelden

At various points over the last twenty-five years or so, I’ve debated writing different books on territory. Many of the articles I’ve written on this topic were early versions of parts of the books I did write on territory, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam David Morton, Antonio Negri, Carl Schmitt, Felix Guattari, Gaston Gordillo, Gilles Deleuze, Grégoire Chamayou, Henri Lefebvre, Jean Gottmann, Jeremy Crampton, Luiza Bialasiewicz, Michael Hardt, Michel Foucault, My Publications, Neil Brenner, Paul Virilio, Peter Sloterdijk, Philip Steinberg, Shakespearean Territories, Sunday Histories, terrain, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Birth of Territory, Uncategorized | Leave a comment