Category Archives: Claude Lévi-Strauss

Georges Bataille correspondence – taking a look at the bound volumes at the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Posted on November 16, 2023 by stuartelden

A lot of letters to and from Georges Bataille have been published (for example, here), but the two bound volumes of correspondence at the Bibliothèque nationale are still something to behold. Given how much of his library and correspondence has … Continue reading →

Posted in Albert Camus, Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Karl Jaspers, Kostas Axelos, Maurice Blanchot, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Mircea Eliade, Pierre Klossowski, Roger Caillois, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Books received – Milner, Lévi-Strauss, Lefebvre, Guattari, Saussure, Walters & Tazzioli

Posted on June 13, 2023 by stuartelden

Some books for the Indo-European thought project, together with the copy of Musset Henri Lefebvre gave to Georges Bataille (more here) and William Walters and Martina Tazzioli (eds.), Handbook on Governmentality, in which I have a chapter on Foucault and … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Felix Guattari, Ferdinand de Saussure, Georges Bataille, Georges Dumézil, Henri Lefebvre, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault | 4 Comments

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

Posted on May 26, 2023 by stuartelden

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

Claude Lévi-Strauss: the Fondation Loubat lectures 

Posted on May 18, 2023 by stuartelden

Update August 2025: A revised and expanded version of this post is here, as part of the ‘Sunday Histories’ series. In the 1949-50 academic year, Claude Lévi-Strauss gave the Fondation Loubat lectures at the Collège de France. Although he was trying … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Books received – Ginzburg, Filoni, Simpson, Mehlman, Lévi-Strauss, Dumézil 

Posted on May 10, 2023 by stuartelden

Mainly bought second-hand, but also Tim Simpson, Betting on Macau, sent by University of Minnesota Press. Dumézil’s Archaic Roman Religion was hard to find in its original two-volume form, with case – before I had a mismatched set of one … Continue reading →

Posted in Carlo Ginzburg, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Books received – Eliade, Gavotte, Jorland, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes

Posted on April 30, 2023 by stuartelden

Mostly bought in Paris – second-hand books for the new project: Mircea Eliade, Oceanographie; Pierre Gavotte, La Marquise et moi (which has a preface by Dumézil, and contains many letters to his daughter); Gerard Jorland’s study of Alexandre Koyré; Lévi-Strauss’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mircea Eliade, Roland Barthes | 1 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

Posted on April 28, 2023 by stuartelden

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

Alexandre Koyré and a network of ideas

Posted on April 26, 2023 by stuartelden

In several previous projects – on Foucault, Heidegger, Canguilhem, territory – I’ve briefly mentioned the work of Alexandre Koyré. He’s coming up again in the new work in relation to Benveniste, Dumézil, Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson. Koyré introduced Lévi-Strauss to Jakobson … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Edmund Husserl, Emile Benveniste, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Territory | 13 Comments

Hugh Lopes Williams, ‘Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Political Paradoxes of Structural Anthropology’ – Journal of the History of Ideas blog

Posted on April 19, 2023 by stuartelden

Hugh Lopes Williams, ‘Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Political Paradoxes of Structural Anthropology‘ – Journal of the History of Ideas blog In 1952, Claude Lévi-Strauss, then a respected but by no means famous anthropologist, published the short book Race and History, commissioned … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Indo-European thought in twentieth-century France update 10: Dumézil’s early work and archives; the Collège de Sociologie and Blanchot; Eliade in Paris; Lévi-Strauss

Posted on March 27, 2023 by stuartelden

Since the last update on this project, the main task has been beginning to work through Dumézil’s books and articles in broadly chronological order, filling in some gaps in my earlier reading, and trying to write a bit about each. So far, I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Bataille, Georges Dumézil, Julia Kristeva, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, The Archaeology of Foucault | 3 Comments