Category Archives: People

Trevor Pateman on Barthes as a teacher, and attending classes by Foucault, Derrida, Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson

Posted on February 18, 2026 by stuartelden

A very interesting short piece about spending the 1971-72 academic year in Paris – Trevor Pateman, “Roland Barthes: Writer, Intellectual, and also Professor”, Barthes Studies, 2025 (open access). It briefly mentions Foucault: But Barthes’ preferences were very similar to Foucault’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson | Leave a comment

Foucault’s 17 May 1979 Collège de France seminar with Paul Veyne published

Posted on February 17, 2026 by stuartelden

“Séminaire de Michel Foucault du 17 mai 1979 au Collège de France“, Raisons politiques 100, 2025, 15-52 This is very interesting – a seminar discussing Paul Veyne’s “Foucault révolutionne l’histoire”. A presentation by Veyne, response by Foucault and contributions by … Continue reading →

Posted in Michel Foucault, Paul Veyne, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Umberto Eco, Philosophers, Mythologists and Linguists

Posted on February 15, 2026 by stuartelden

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 | 5 Comments

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

Posted on February 14, 2026 by stuartelden

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

Posted on February 12, 2026 by stuartelden

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

Posted on February 10, 2026 by stuartelden

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”

Posted on February 9, 2026 by stuartelden

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

Posted on February 8, 2026 by stuartelden

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

Posted on February 5, 2026 by stuartelden

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

Posted on February 1, 2026 by stuartelden

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