Category Archives: Étienne Wolff

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

Foucault’s Hermaphrodites – from Herculine Barbin to a planned volume of the History of Sexuality and the recently published manuscript

Posted on November 2, 2025 by stuartelden

In May 1978, Foucault edited the memoir of a “hermaphrodite”, Herculine Barbin, for publication. In the dossier of documents appended to that text he says that “the question of strange destinies like these and which posed such problems for medicine … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Canguilhem (book), Foucault's Last Decade, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault | 4 Comments

Books received – Gusdorf, Foucault, Wolff, Ellenberger, Ramnoux, Dosse, Mabon

Posted on October 27, 2025 by stuartelden

Books bought new or second-hand – Georges Gusdorf, Le crépuscule des illusions; Michel Foucault, Les Hermaphrodites; Étienne Wolff, Les Changements de sexe; François Ellenberger, Histoire de la géologie 1; Rossella Saetta Cottone ed. Clémence Ramnoux, entre mythes et philosophie: Dumézil, Freud, … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Clémence Ramnoux, François Ellenberger, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Books written by French professors while prisoners of war in World War II, and the Université de Captivité in Oflag XVII-A

Posted on September 28, 2025 by stuartelden

There are many famous books written in prison, from Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy to Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Socrates’ final words in prison are dramatized by Plato in the Crito. The Marquis de Sade wrote some of his books in prison, and Miguel … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Antonio Negri, Étienne Wolff, Emmanuel Levinas, Fernand Braudel, François Ellenberger, Georges Canguilhem, Hannah Arendt, Jean Cavaillès, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Raymond Ruyer, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Walter Benjamin | 6 Comments

Étienne Wolff and the biology of monsters – writing as a prisoner of war, Collège de France administrator, and the engagement with his work by Georges Canguilhem, Georges Bataille and Michel Foucault

Posted on September 21, 2025 by stuartelden

In exploring the histories of professors and their teaching at the Collège de France, I’ve often looked at correspondence between chairs, candidates and the administrator. Administrators are elected from within the professoriate and have quite a lot of power in … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Étienne Wolff, Canguilhem (book), Fernand Braudel, Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

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 | 2 Comments

Books received – Braudel, Wolff, Bourke, Bataille, Felsch

Posted on August 12, 2025 by stuartelden

Some second-hand copies of Fernand Braudel, and Etienne Wolff’s Les chemins de la vie, and copies of Richard Bourke, Hegel’s World Revolutions, Georges Bataille, Critical Essays 2, and Philipp Felsch, The Summer of Theory: History of a Rebellion, 1960-1990. Wolff … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Bradley Garrett, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Georges Bataille | Leave a comment