Category Archives: Emile Benveniste

Six Months of ‘Sunday Histories’ – weekly short essays on Progressive Geographies

At the beginning of 2025 I decided to try to post a short essay each week on Progressive Geographies. I felt the blog had become too much of a noticeboard, sharing information about interesting books, talks or shorter pieces by … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Kojève, Alexandre Koyré, Edward Said, Emile Benveniste, Erwin Panofsky, Henri Lefebvre, Jean Hyppolite, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Territory, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Leonard Robert Palmer, Elisabeth/Elizabeth Palmer and the “Studies in General Linguistics” series – a note on the English editors and translators of André Martinet and Émile Benveniste

Leonard Robert Palmer (1906-1984) was a British linguist, important both for his own work and as an editor. Early in his career he taught Classics at the Victoria University of Manchester, became Chair of Greek at King’s College London, and from … Continue reading

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | 4 Comments

Gillian Rose and the Indo-Europeanists

While I’ve been working on my Indo-European thought project, I’ve looked at a few books from the University of Warwick’s library which came from the Gillian Rose collection. Some of the books from that collection could not be borrowed – ones … Continue reading

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Gillian Rose, Mircea Eliade, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 28: archives in Princeton, Chicago and final work in New York

I’ve continued my work with archives in the USA over the past several weeks. Some of this has been in relation to the Indo-European Thought project, but I’ve managed to work on some peripheral things too.I had two days in Princeton, … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Edward Said, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Derrida, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Vladimir Nabokov | 1 Comment

Books received – Adorno, Benveniste, Jakobson, Godel

Three books by Adorno from Verso, and second-hand copies of Émile Benveniste’s Indo-European Language and Society, the first volume of Roman Jakobson’s Selected Writings, and Robert Godel, Les Sources Manuscrites du cours de linguistique générale de F. de Saussure.

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Émile Benveniste and the Sogdian Word for ‘Knee’

This was written for an event on ‘Troubling Classical Bodies‘ at the Remarque Institute at New York University on 11 April 2025. My thanks to Stefanos Geroulanos and Brooke Holmes for the invitation to give this short talk, and to … Continue reading

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Fifteen ‘Sunday Histories’ on Progressive Geographies

There are now fifteen ‘Sunday Histories‘ posted on Progressive Geographies – short essays about something related, directly or indirectly, to my research. I’ve been posting these weekly through 2025. I could have predicted the three on Foucault would get the … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, David Farrell Krell, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Erwin Panofsky, Gillian Rose, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Territory, Umberto Eco | Leave a comment

Elisabeth Raucq, animal names and approaches to Indo-European vocabulary

In the preface to the second edition of his Mitra-Varuna, Georges Dumézil mentions some of the people who attended the lecture course which became the book. Delivered at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1938-39, this was the last year … Continue reading

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Roger Caillois, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Troubling Classical Bodies, Remarque Institute, New York University, 11 April 2025, 12.30pm and online – Brooke Holmes, Anurima Banerji and Stuart Elden

Troubling Classical Bodies, Remarque Institute, New York University, 11 April 2025, 12.30pm and online – Brooke Holmes, Anurima Banerji and Stuart Elden I’ll be speaking about an aspect of my Indo-European project, on an early text by Émile Benveniste about … Continue reading

Posted in Conferences, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Territory of the Vocabulary and the Vocabulary of Territory: Emile Benveniste 

If I was writing The Birth of Territory again, I would certainly have found a little space for a brief discussion of Émile Benveniste and his Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, now available in English again as the Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society and open access … Continue reading

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Reinhart Koselleck, Sunday Histories, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Birth of Territory | 7 Comments