Category Archives: Claude Lévi-Strauss

Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roger Caillois – Race, Games and a Ceremonial Sword

Posted on December 28, 2025 by stuartelden

Roger Caillois and Claude Lévi-Strauss both spent the war in exile from France. Lévi-Strauss had done fieldwork in Brazil in the 1930s, but when he left France he went through Martinique and was detained in Puerto Rico before going to … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil, Roger Caillois, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Books received – Davy, Luyssen, Deleuze, Lévi-Strauss and Dreyfus, Derrida

Posted on December 24, 2025 by stuartelden

Some second-hand or new French books, including Johanna Luyssen, Les Fragments d’Hélène, Deleuze’s Sur l’appareil d’État et la machine de guerre: Cours novembre 1979-mars 1980 and Sur Spinoza, Aux sources de tristes tropiques. Les carnets de terrain de Claude et Dina … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida | Leave a comment

Gordon and Tina Wasson, Slavic Studies in the Cold War, and the Hallucinogenic Mushroom

Posted on November 23, 2025 by stuartelden

R. Gordon Wasson was Vice President at the American investment bank J.P. Morgan & Co., a major supporter of Slavic Studies in the United States during the Cold War, and fascinated by hallucinogenic mushrooms.  His wife, Valentina Pavlovna Wasson was … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 30 – archive work in Paris, Bern and Cambridge, MA, and Benveniste’s library

Posted on November 12, 2025 by stuartelden

The formal end of the Leverhulme major research fellowship for the Indo-European thought project was at the end of September, but I have a no-cost extension until the end of January. This is invaluable, and is effectively to extend the grant for … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Claude Lévi-Strauss, David Harvey, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Erwin Panofsky, Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Derrida, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Jacques Derrida, Given Time II, eds. Laura Odello, Peter Szendy and Rodrigo Therezo, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf – University of Chicago Press, March 2026

Posted on November 3, 2025 by stuartelden

Jacques Derrida, Given Time II, eds. Laura Odello, Peter Szendy and Rodrigo Therezo, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf – University of Chicago Press, March 2026 The long-awaited conclusion to Derrida’s seminar on the gift and time. In 1991, Jacques … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Marcel Mauss, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil and Benoîte Groult: the Académie française and the debate about feminine nouns for professions

Posted on October 19, 2025 by stuartelden

In his dialogues with Didier Eribon, published in 1989, Claude Lévi-Strauss commented on the linguistic work of the Académie française, and especially a campaign to amend the gender terminology of professions. Should, for example, a female politician be referred to … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil, Roger Caillois, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Did Benveniste read Derrida’s Of Grammatology?

Posted on October 12, 2025 by stuartelden

Jacques Derrida was certainly a careful reader of Émile Benveniste. He wrote a critique of Benveniste in “Le supplément de copule. La philosophie devant la linguistique” which appeared in 1971, in a special issue of Langages, “Épistémologie de la linguistique” edited … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Felix Guattari, Ferdinand de Saussure, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Julia Kristeva, Marcel Mauss, Martin Heidegger, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Roman Jakobson’s two series of 1972 lectures at the Collège de France – dating, topics and archival traces, and his friendships with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan

Posted on August 31, 2025 by stuartelden

In Stephen Rudy’s chronology of Roman Jakobson’s career, the entry for 1972 reads, in part:  Visiting Professor, Collège de France, Dec. […] Professeur d’état, Collège de France. Four lectures, Feb. 3-8. How many lectures did he give across the visits, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Antoine Meillet, Étienne Wolff, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 29: working on Benveniste’s Vocabulaire, Dumézil’s Bilan and other work

Posted on August 18, 2025 by stuartelden

I’ve been back in the UK for a few months, though I continue to work through the archival material I saw in the United States, some of which is in the form of notes, some photos of things, and a … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Gillian Rose, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson | 1 Comment

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Fondation Loubat lectures at the Collège de France: A Structural Analysis of the Wolverine in North American Mythology

Posted on August 10, 2025 by stuartelden

In the 1949-50 academic year, Claude Lévi-Strauss gave the Fondation Loubat lectures at the Collège de France. He was hoping to get elected to a chair there at this time, and behind the scenes various people were lobbying for this to … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sunday Histories | 4 Comments