Category Archives: People

Hegel 13/13 – Columbia University Centre for Contemporary Critical Thought series

The seminars at the Columbia University Centre for Contemporary Critical Thought organised by Bernard Harcourt continue with Hegel 13/13. I was able to go to several of the Marx 13/13 series earlier this year, and the larger events are usually … Continue reading

Posted in Bernard E. Harcourt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Henri Lefebvre, Jean-Paul Sartre, Judith Butler, Karl Marx, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Jeffrey Andrew Barash, The Politics of Historical Interpretation:  Reflections on Ideology and the Perplexities of Political Myth – De Gruyter Brill, August 2025

Jeffrey Andrew Barash, The Politics of Historical Interpretation:  Reflections on Ideology and the Perplexities of Political Myth – De Gruyter Brill, August 2025 This book focuses on political presuppositions animating modern historical reflection in Germany that underwent sharp radicalization in … Continue reading

Posted in Carl Schmitt, Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Arnault Skornicki, Michel Foucault, the State and the Social Sciences – Springer, September 2025

Arnault Skornicki, Michel Foucault, the State and the Social Sciences – Springer, September 2025 based on La grande Soif de l’État. Michel Foucault avec les sciences sociales (2017) This book proposes an original reading of Foucault’s political thought. Far from … Continue reading

Posted in Michel Foucault | 1 Comment

Glyph: Johns Hopkins Textual Studies – Samuel Weber, Deconstruction and the American Reception of French Theory

Several journals played a significant role in introducing so-called ‘French Theory’ to the United States. They would include Yale French Studies, Diacritics, boundary 2 and Semiotext(e). Yale French Studies claims to be “the oldest English-language journal in the United States devoted to French and Francophone literature and … Continue reading

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Sunday Histories | 1 Comment

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

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The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore, sent by University of Minnesota Press, and Ernst Kantorowicz, Radiances: Unpublished Essays on Gods, Kingship, and Images of the State, edited by Robert E. Lerner, … Continue reading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

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

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

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

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

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