Category Archives: Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France

Émile Benveniste and the Sogdian Word for ‘Knee’

Posted on April 27, 2025 by stuartelden

This was written for an event on ‘Troubling Classical Bodies‘ at the Remarque Institute at New York University on 11 April 2025. My thanks to Stefanos Geroulanos and Brooke Holmes for the invitation to give this short talk, and to … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Elisabeth Raucq, animal names and approaches to Indo-European vocabulary

Posted on April 13, 2025 by stuartelden

In the preface to the second edition of his Mitra-Varuna, Georges Dumézil mentions some of the people who attended the lecture course which became the book. Delivered at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1938-39, this was the last year … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Roger Caillois, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Troubling Classical Bodies, Remarque Institute, New York University, 11 April 2025, 12.30pm and online – Brooke Holmes, Anurima Banerji and Stuart Elden

Posted on March 31, 2025 by stuartelden

Troubling Classical Bodies, Remarque Institute, New York University, 11 April 2025, 12.30pm and online – Brooke Holmes, Anurima Banerji and Stuart Elden I’ll be speaking about an aspect of my Indo-European project, on an early text by Émile Benveniste about … Continue reading →

Posted in Conferences, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Territory of the Vocabulary and the Vocabulary of Territory: Emile Benveniste 

Posted on March 30, 2025 by stuartelden

If I was writing The Birth of Territory again, I would certainly have found a little space for a brief discussion of Émile Benveniste and his Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, now available in English again as the Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society and open access … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Reinhart Koselleck, Sunday Histories, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Birth of Territory | 7 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 27: more archive work on Saussure, Blanchot, Foucault, Jakobson and Koyré, two recordings, and a talk at the University at Buffalo

Posted on March 24, 2025 by stuartelden

I’ve been doing a lot more work in archives in the United States for this project over the past few weeks. I had a few days up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was even colder than New York. There, I was … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, David Farrell Krell, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Ferdinand de Saussure, Georges Dumézil, Hannah Arendt, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson | 1 Comment

St Andrews and Nottingham talks on the ‘Indo-European’ project – audio recordings

Posted on March 21, 2025 by stuartelden

A couple of audio recordings of talks I’ve given on my ‘Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France‘ project. There is background on the project and some other recordings, updates on the research, short pieces and research resources at that page. … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Georges Dumézil, Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty, translated by Derek Coltman, edited by Stuart Elden, afterword by Veena Das – HAU books, December 2024 (now open access)

Posted on March 10, 2025 by stuartelden

Georges Dumézil, Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty, translated by Derek Coltman, edited by Stuart Elden, afterword by Veena Das – HAU books, December 2024 Pleased to say that the book is now available as an open-access … Continue reading →

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

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 26: Benveniste’s late publications; Sunday Histories; beginning archival work in the United States

Posted on February 14, 2025 by stuartelden

Since the last update in December, I’ve been making some good progress on this project. The focus has mainly been on Benveniste’s work in the 1960s. But, as ever, I’ve found myself backtracking to earlier parts of his career and seeing some potentially … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Henri Lefebvre, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Understanding Henri Lefebvre | Leave a comment

Sunday histories – short essays on Progressive Geographies

Posted on February 2, 2025 by stuartelden

Updated June 2025: The full list of essays in this series is here. Over the past several years, my Progressive Geographies blog has become too much of a noticeboard, sharing information about books, talks or shorter pieces by other people … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories | 2 Comments

Benveniste and the Linguistic Circle of Prague

Posted on January 19, 2025 by stuartelden

There are some good histories of the Linguistic Circle of Prague, which met in the years before the Second World War, and which included Russian scholars as well as ones from Czechoslovakia. Jindřich Toman’s The Magic of a Common Language is a particularly … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 11 Comments