Category Archives: People

Umberto Eco, Philosophers, Mythologists and Linguists

19 February 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Umberto Eco. I only heard Eco speak once, at a book reading in October 1995 for The Island of the Day Before. Mario Vargas Llosa was the other scheduled speaker, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Italo Calvino, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Umberto Eco, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Chandler D. Rogers, Merleau-Ponty and the Human-Animal Relation: From Eros to Environmental Responsibility – Edinburgh University Press, January 2026

Chandler D. Rogers, Merleau-Ponty and the Human-Animal Relation: From Eros to Environmental Responsibility – Edinburgh University Press, January 2026

Posted in Maurice Merleau-Ponty | Leave a comment

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 31 – Paris archives, library problems, and working towards a complete draft

The draft of the Mapping Indo-European Thought manuscript is slowly coming together. I’ve just begun a Fernand Braudel fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence. My plan was to come here with a complete draft, and to leave with a better … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clémence Ramnoux, Emile Benveniste, Felix Guattari, Georges Dumézil, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Marcel Detienne, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Normativity of Marx’s Aristotelian-Hegelianism: An Interview with Michael Lazarus

The Normativity of Marx’s Aristotelian-Hegelianism: An Interview with Michael Lazarus – JHI blog Michael Lazarus is a Lecturer in Political Theory in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. He previously served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale … Continue reading →

Posted in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The differences between the article and book versions of Jacques Derrida’s “Cogito and the History of Madness”

There are lots of small changes made by Jacques Derrida to his critique of Foucault between the 1963 article “Cogito et histoire de la folie” and its republication in the 1967 book L’écriture et la différence, translated by Alan Bass as Writing and Difference. As … Continue reading →

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Foucault and his Critics – two minor notes on his exchanges with Jacques Derrida and J.M. Pelorson

Two small things I’ve found or noticed recently which shed a little light on Foucault’s engagement with his critics. 1. Jacques Derrida I have discussed the Derrida-Foucault debate about Foucault’s History of Madness before, most fully in The Archaeology of Foucault (pp. 16-21). I’m … Continue reading →

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault | 4 Comments

Lasse Thomassen, Derrida, Deconstruction and Political Theory – Edinburgh University Press, January 2026

Lasse Thomassen, Derrida, Deconstruction and Political Theory – Edinburgh University Press, January 2026

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Roland Barthes’s Seminar on the Metaphor of the Labyrinth, and the presentations by Marcel Detienne, Gilles Deleuze and Pierre Rosenstiehl

In 1978-79 Roland Barthes held a seminar at the Collège de France on “The Metaphor of the Labyrinth”. It was another spatial theme, after his discussion of territory and territoriality in Comment Vivre Ensemble/How to Live Together the previous year, which I … Continue reading →

Posted in Gilles Deleuze, Marcel Detienne, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories | 5 Comments

Books received – Nietzsche, Eco, Todorov, Zurn, Serres, Wheatland, Jakobson

Mostly in recompense for review work for De Gruyter – the two expensive Jakobson volumes; for University of Minnesota Press – Michel Serres, Hermes I: Communication; Thomas Wheatland, The Frankfurt School in Exile; and Perry Zurn, Curiosity and Power: The … Continue reading →

Posted in Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Serres, Roman Jakobson, Umberto Eco | 1 Comment

Peter Johnson, Philosophy for a Time of Crisis: Michel Serres and Climate Change – independently published, January 2026

Peter Johnson, Philosophy for a Time of Crisis: Michel Serres and Climate Change – independently published, January 2026 Update: the ebook is free on Amazon from 18 May to 22 May 2026

Posted in Michel Serres, Uncategorized | Leave a comment