Category Archives: Emile Benveniste

“Indo-European Thought in Post-War France“, Warwick Seminar for Interdisciplinary French Studies, 31 May 2023 (video)

My talk to the Warwick Seminar for Interdisciplinary French Studies was recorded and is available online – “Indo-European Thought in Post-War France“ I begin with two stories – one about the Mission Paul Pelliot and its importance to the early … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Indo-European Thought, Mircea Eliade, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

‘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, Indo-European Thought, 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, Indo-European Thought, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

James McElvenny (ed.), The Limits of Structuralism: Forgotten Texts in the History of Modern Linguistics – Oxford University Press, March 2023

James McElvenny (ed.), The Limits of Structuralism: Forgotten Texts in the History of Modern Linguistics – Oxford University Press, March 2023 An expensive but interesting looking collection – also available on Oxford Scholarship Online. Based around seven primary texts spanning … Continue reading

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

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 de France in 1967, you can perhaps see why. It wasn’t much better … Continue reading

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Indo-European Thought, Uncategorized | 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

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, Indo-European Thought, Italo Calvino, Jacques Lacan, Mircea Eliade, Umberto Eco, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Alexandre Koyré and a network of ideas

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, Territory | 7 Comments

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

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 | 1 Comment

Indo-European thought project update 9: Dumézil’s courses; Benveniste’s teaching records; Barthes, Lacan, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida; and a forthcoming article on “Foucault and Dumézil on Antiquity”

Over the last month I have made some progress on a few different aspects of this project.  The main task in Paris was continuing working through the boxes of Georges Dumézil’s courses, held at the Collège de France archives. I’ve now … Continue reading

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Felix Guattari, Georges Dumézil, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, The Archaeology of Foucault | 2 Comments

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 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Indo-European Thought, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, The Archaeology of Foucault, The Early Foucault | Leave a comment