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

‘Indo-European Thought in Post-War France’, Warwick Seminar for Interdisciplinary French Studies, 31 May 2023, 4pm

Update: the recording is available here For anyone interested in my new project, I’ll be speaking about some of it in an online seminar today at 4pm: ‘Indo-European Thought in Post-War France’, Warwick Seminar for Interdisciplinary French Studies

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

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 12: working in some UK archives; Benveniste’s EPHE teaching; some talks on the research

After the last update a friend contacted me with some valuable information – about an archive which was already on my list of ones to try to visit when in the United States next year, but should certainly now be … Continue reading

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Eric Hobsbawm, Georges Dumézil, Gillian Rose, Henri Lefebvre, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Marie-Louise Sjoestedt (1900-1940) – an important scholar of Celtic languages and mythology

Update January 2025: A revised and expanded version of this post is here. One of the problems with my current project on Indo-European thought in France is how male-dominated it is. If you look at a photograph of the Collège … Continue reading

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Urban Nature podcast episode 4: Stuart Elden and Gabriel Kozlowski

Urban Nature episode 4: Stuart Elden and Gabriel Kozlowski I was pleased to be Gabriel’s guest on the Urban Nature podcast for a discussion of several different aspects of my work – on territory, terrain, Lefebvre, Foucault, Shakespeare and even … Continue reading

Posted in Bruno Latour, Henri Lefebvre, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Shakespearean Territories, terrain, Territory, The Birth of Territory, Uncategorized, William Shakespeare | Leave a comment

Indo-European thought in twentieth-century France update 11: Dumézil and Charachidzé’s work on Ubykh; Lévi-Strauss and his archive; Eliade’s correspondence; Koyré’s networks; and continuing work with Dumézil’s archive

My attempt with this project to keep to a broadly chronological order of working through of Georges Dumézil’s major publications (see last update) took a bit of a detour, as his 1931 book La Langue des Oubykhs led me to follow the thread … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Italo Calvino, Jacques Lacan, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson, Umberto Eco, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Indo-European thought project update 8: working on Barthes, Lévi-Strauss and the Mission Paul Pelliot

Since the last update on this project I’ve not done quite what I intended. I had thought I’d begin working systematically through Georges Dumézil’s works in a chronological way, filling in much detail and some gaps in my previous reading. Instead I went down … Continue reading

Posted in Aurel Stein, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clémence Ramnoux, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, The Archaeology of Foucault, The Early Foucault | 1 Comment

Books received – Blanchot, Lévi-Strauss, Hollier, Jackson, Barthes

Mainly second-hand books bought for the Indo-European thought project, but also Mark Laurence Jackson, Diagrams of Power in Benjamin and Foucault: The Recluse of Architecture, in recompense for review work.

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin | Leave a comment

Stuart Elden, The Archaeology of Foucault – Polity, December 2022

Stuart Elden, The Archaeology of Foucault – Polity, December 2022 The fourth and final book in my series of studies of Foucault’s career is now published in the UK. US and rest of the world will follow in early 2023. … Continue reading

Posted in Canguilhem (book), Etienne Balibar, Foucault's Last Decade, Foucault: The Birth of Power, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, My Publications, The Archaeology of Foucault, The Early Foucault, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Stuart Elden, ‘Editing Georges Dumézil’s Mitra-Varuna’, Berfrois, December 2022

Update September 2025: the Berfrois site is now closed and the archive has been removed. My piece can now be found here. I have a short piece at Berfrois, ‘Editing Georges Dumézil’s Mitra-Varuna‘. Sadly Berfrois is closing, so I want … Continue reading

Posted in Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Immanuel Kant, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, William Shakespeare | Leave a comment

Some bibliographical questions about Roland Barthes [with some answers]

Some bibliographical questions about Roland Barthes. Any answers much appreciated – and with the first three will hopefully interesting to others; the final one is more a remark (or, as the cliché goes, more of a comment than a question). … Continue reading

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Bataille, Ludwig Binswanger, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Uncategorized | 2 Comments