Category Archives: People

Books received – Febvre, Hiltebeitel, Comaroff, Kantorowicz, Glyph 7, Gadoffre, Eliade & Couliano, Harvey

Posted on September 5, 2025 by stuartelden

Books received – mostly bought second-hand, but also Joshua Comaroff, Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore, sent by University of Minnesota Press, and Ernst Kantorowicz, Radiances: Unpublished Essays on Gods, Kingship, and Images of the State, edited by Robert E. Lerner, … Continue reading →

Posted in David Harvey, Ernst Kantorowicz, Mircea Eliade, Sunday Histories | 3 Comments

Bart Buseyne, Georgios Tsagdis and Paul Willemarck eds., Bernard Stiegler: Memories of the Future – Bloomsbury, August 2025

Posted on September 5, 2025 by stuartelden

Bart Buseyne, Georgios Tsagdis and Paul Willemarck eds., Bernard Stiegler: Memories of the Future – Bloomsbury, August 2025 Honouring the memory of the late Bernard Stiegler, this edited collection presents a broad spectrum of contributions that provide a complex and … Continue reading →

Posted in Bernard Stiegler, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Maddalena Cerrato, Michel Foucault’s Practical Philosophy: A Critique of Subjectivation Processes – SUNY Press, May 2025 (paperback November) and New Books Network discussion

Posted on September 3, 2025 by stuartelden

Maddalena Cerrato, Michel Foucault’s Practical Philosophy: A Critique of Subjectivation Processes – SUNY Press, May 2025 (paperback November) New Books Network discussion with Morteza Hajizadeh – thanks to dmf for the link Offers a holistic approach to Michel Foucault’s thought, … Continue reading →

Posted in Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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 | 5 Comments

Michael Behrent, Becoming Foucault – reviews by Stuart Elden, Ryan L. Allen and Philip Rosemann

Posted on August 29, 2025 by stuartelden

I review Michael Behrent’s Becoming Foucault: The Poitiers Years (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) in The Journal of Modern History. This review was written and accepted well over a year ago, and it seems crazy to me how long journals … Continue reading →

Posted in Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Berfrois articles – an archive of my pieces for this much-missed site

Posted on August 26, 2025 by stuartelden

Between 2011 and 2022 I wrote eleven pieces for the much-missed Berfrois site. Most were reviews of recent books. Although the site closed to new submissions in 2022, I thought the archive would be preserved. I was therefore disappointed to … Continue reading →

Posted in Ernst Kantorowicz, Foucault's Last Decade, Foucault: The Birth of Power, Georges Dumézil, Immanuel Kant, Michel Foucault, Shakespearean Territories, The Archaeology of Foucault, The Early Foucault, Uncategorized, William Shakespeare | Leave a comment

Michel Foucault’s early English translations – indications from the archives of the Georges Borchardt literary agency, the memoirs of André Schiffrin and the Susan Sontag connection

Posted on August 24, 2025 by stuartelden

Now it is almost automatic: a new book by Foucault in French is translated within a couple of years. The Collège de France courses, the Vrin series of critical editions of lecture courses and now other material, the fourth volume … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Michel Foucault, Roger Caillois, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Gilles Deleuze, On Painting: Courses, March-June 1981, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Charles J. Stivale – University of Minnesota Press, August 2025

Posted on August 22, 2025 by stuartelden

Gilles Deleuze, On Painting: Courses, March-June 1981, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Charles J. Stivale – University of Minnesota Press, August 2025 A translation of Gilles Deleuze, Sur la peinture – ed. David Lapoujade, Minuit, 2023 Update October 2025: New Books … Continue reading →

Posted in Gilles Deleuze, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 29: working on Benveniste’s Vocabulaire, Dumézil’s Bilan and other work

Posted on August 18, 2025 by stuartelden

I’ve been back in the UK for a few months, though I continue to work through the archival material I saw in the United States, some of which is in the form of notes, some photos of things, and a … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Gillian Rose, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson | 1 Comment

Lucien Gerschel, Georges Dumézil, William Shakespeare and the history of Coriolanus 

Posted on August 17, 2025 by stuartelden

One of Georges Dumézil’s most loyal students was Lucien Gerschel. He seems to have begun attending his classes at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1937-38, but certainly was there for the 1938-39 course which became Dumézil’s 1940 book Mitra-Varuna. … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Shakespearean Territories, Sunday Histories, William Shakespeare | 1 Comment