Category Archives: Claude Lévi-Strauss

Josué V. Harari, the Marquis de Sade, and Michel Foucault’s 1970 lectures in Buffalo

Posted on June 15, 2025 by stuartelden

Josué V. Harari plays a small but important role in the story of Foucault in the United States. A PhD researcher at the University at Buffalo when Foucault visited in the early 1970s, he went on to edit a 1979 volume … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Edward Said, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, Pierre Klossowski, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories | 6 Comments

Roman Jakobson, Franz Boas, and the Paleo-Siberian and Aleutian material at the New York Public Library

Posted on June 1, 2025 by stuartelden

The support for refugee scholars to come to the United States of America in the 1930s and 1940s is well known. Varian Fry famously helped several hundred European artists and intellectuals to flee Vichy France between 1940 and 1941. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ernst Cassirer, Ernst Kantorowicz, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 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

Aux sources de tristes tropiques. Les carnets de terrain de Claude et Dina Lévi-Strauss (1935-1939), ed. Emmanuel Désveaux et. al. – Éditions de l’EHESS, March 2025

Posted on March 11, 2025 by stuartelden

Aux sources de tristes tropiques. Les carnets de terrain de Claude et Dina Lévi-Strauss (1935-1939), ed. Emmanuel Désveaux et. al. – Éditions de l’EHESS, March 2025 « Je hais les voyages et les explorateurs ». En 1955, c’est par ces … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Uncategorized | 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

Vladimir Nabokov, Roman Jakobson, Marc Szeftel and The Song of Igor

Posted on February 9, 2025 by stuartelden

Superficially at least, the stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) would seem to connect. Both were born in Russia – Nabokov in Saint Petersburg; Jakobson in Moscow; both went into exile after the Revolution – Nabokov in … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil, Jean Gottmann, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Vladimir Nabokov | 17 Comments

My favourite academic books of 2024

Posted on December 31, 2024 by stuartelden

At the end of each year I’ve posted a list of academic books I liked. The criteria was that they were published in that year (or late the previous one), and that I read and liked them. Many of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Eduardo Mendieta, Fredric Jameson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gillian Rose, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Stefanos Geroulanos, Territory, Theory, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Books received – Foucault, Greimas, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, Vernant, Lejeune

Posted on December 30, 2024 by stuartelden

Most of these bought on a recent Paris trip, and a couple from online second-hand stores. Spectres of Marx is a new edition, including a debate with Étienne Balibar; Du même à l’autre is the most recent seminar volume, including … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault | 1 Comment

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 25: Benveniste’s teaching, a talk at St Andrews, Tzvetan Todorov, Roman Jakobson, and some archival work in Paris and Oxford

Posted on December 20, 2024 by stuartelden

I’m overdue an update on this project, but while I’ve been working hard, I haven’t felt there has been much to say until now. I’ve also had some further health problems, leading to another shorter stay in hospital and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson | 3 Comments

Books received – Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Derrida, Arendt and Scholem

Posted on November 18, 2024 by stuartelden

Books sent in recompense for review work for University of Chicago Press – three of the four volumes of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Mythologies (the other one is out of print), Michel Foucault, What is Critique? and The Culture of the Self, … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault | 1 Comment