Category Archives: People

Peter Sloterdijk, If You Have Never Thought Gray: A Theory of Color – trans. Corey Anderson Dansereau and Robert Hughes, Polity, June 2025

Posted on October 2, 2025 by stuartelden

Peter Sloterdijk, If You Have Never Thought Gray: A Theory of Color – trans. Corey Anderson Dansereau and Robert Hughes, Polity, June 2025 “You’re not a painter if you haven’t painted gray”, declared Paul Cézanne. The same could be said of philosophers: … Continue reading →

Posted in Peter Sloterdijk | 1 Comment

Jean de Menasce’s dedication to Émile Benveniste – “in memory of the year of exile”

Posted on October 1, 2025 by stuartelden

I already knew that Jean de Menasce dedicated his edition and translation of the 9th century Zoroastrian theological text Škand-Gumānīk Vičār to Émile Benveniste. Benveniste had taught de Menasce Iranian languages, especially Pahlavi, in the late 1930s at the École Pratique des Hautes … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Jean de Menasce, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

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 Wahl, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Raymond Ruyer, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Walter Benjamin | 9 Comments

Jean Hyppolite, Studien über Marx und Hegel – ed. and trans. Thomas Ebke, Sabina Hoth and Frank Müller – Meiner Verlag, 2025

Posted on September 25, 2025 by stuartelden

Jean Hyppolite, Studien über Marx und Hegel – ed. and trans. Thomas Ebke, Sabina Hoth and Frank Müller – Meiner Verlag, 2025 Thanks to Thomas Ebke for the information about this – he says it’s the first translation of a book … Continue reading →

Posted in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jean Hyppolite, Karl Marx | 1 Comment

Graham Holderness, Shakespeare and a Place Calling Itself Rome – Routledge, June 2025

Posted on September 22, 2025 by stuartelden

Graham Holderness, Shakespeare and a Place Calling Itself Rome – Routledge, June 2025

Posted in William Shakespeare | 2 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, Jean Wahl, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Barry Stocker ed. Derrida: Ethics in Deconstruction – Routledge, September 2025

Posted on September 19, 2025 by stuartelden

Barry Stocker ed. Derrida: Ethics in Deconstruction – Routledge, September 2025 Ethics in Deconstruction is vital reading for anyone interested in Derrida and the ethical implications of deconstruction broadly defined. It offers a comprehensive set of essays on the ethics of … Continue reading →

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

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

Posted on September 17, 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

Erwin Panofsky’s dog and Ernst Kantorowicz

Posted on September 15, 2025 by stuartelden

In the archives of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, there are some papers relating to Erwin Panofsky, the art historian, collected by his second wife Gerda Panofsky (née Sörgel). I was led there by the question of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Ernst Kantorowicz, Erwin Panofsky, Pierre Bourdieu, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Pierre Bourdieu and Erwin Panofsky: Architecture, Scholasticism and the Concept of Habitus

Posted on September 14, 2025 by stuartelden

In 1967, Pierre Bourdieu translated Erwin Panofsky’s 1951 book Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism into French. The German-born Panofsky is best known for his work in art history, and for developing Aby Warburg’s distinction between iconography and iconology. He was teaching alternate semesters … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Erwin Panofsky, Ferdinand de Saussure, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Sunday Histories | 5 Comments