Category Archives: Georges Canguilhem

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 30 – archive work in Paris, Bern and Cambridge, MA, and Benveniste’s library

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

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

Federico Testa, On the Politics of the Living: Foucault and Canguilhem on Life and Norms – Bloomsbury, December 2024; Book launch, University of Bristol 22 October 2025

Federico Testa, On the Politics of the Living: Foucault and Canguilhem on Life and Norms – Bloomsbury, December 2024 Book launch, University of Bristol 22 October 2025 You are warmly invited to a book launch and roundtable discussion with Dr. Federico … Continue reading

Posted in Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Books received – Canguilhem, Jerrems, Hayter and Harvey, Leary-Owhin

The final volume of Georges Canguilhem, Oeuvres complètes, Ari Jerrems, The Spatial Limits of Political Community, Teresa Hayter and David Harvey, The Factory and the City: The Story of the Cowley Automobile Workers in Oxford and Michael Edema Leary-Ohwin, Exploring … Continue reading

Posted in David Harvey, Georges Canguilhem, 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

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

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

Alexandre Kojève, Henri Lefebvre and the translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology

This is a revised, expanded and more fully referenced version of a post from March 2024. There is a Spanish translation of the earlier version here. Alexandre Kojève’s seminars on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, given at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Kojève, Alexandre Koyré, Emmanuel Levinas, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Hannah Arendt, Henri Lefebvre, Immanuel Kant, Jacques Lacan, Jean Hyppolite, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Maurice Blanchot, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Stefanos Geroulanos, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Georges Canguilhem, Œuvres complètes Tome VI : Écrits philosophiques complémentaires, conférences publiques, lettres choisies – eds. Camille Limoges and Pierre-Olivier Méthot, Vrin, July 2025

Posted in Georges Canguilhem, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Louis Althusser’s 1967-68 course on ‘philosophy for scientists’ – the resulting publications and the archive of its lectures

Louis Althusser’s seminars at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) are of course best known for the famous Reading Capital volume, which developed from his 1964-65 seminar. He ran seminars on the young Marx in 1961-62 and Lacan and psychoanalysis in 1963-64. I’ve … Continue reading

Posted in Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Georges Canguilhem, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Pierre Macherey, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Books received – Robeyns, Billé, Legg, Neocleous, Daviron, Granet, Shapiro, Testa, Carrigan, Pothecary

Books generously sent to me by publishers, authors or editors. Ingrid Robeyns, Limitarianism; Franck Billé, Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity; Stephen Legg, Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities; Mark Neocleous, Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police; … Continue reading

Posted in Georges Canguilhem, Mark Neocleous, Michel Foucault, Politics, terrain, Territory, Uncategorized | Leave a comment