Category Archives: Roland Barthes

Tel Quel goes to China: Sollers, Kristeva, Barthes, Pleynet, Wahl and the Cultural Revolution

Posted on May 3, 2026 by stuartelden

Tel Quel famously went to China in 1974. Tel Quel was an important literary journal founded in 1960, to which many of the major names of ‘French theory’ contributed, including Michel Foucault, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida. The journal was edited by Philippe … Continue reading →

Posted in Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 32 – trying to improve a draft

Posted on April 20, 2026 by stuartelden

As I said in the last update, I went to the EUI in Florence at the beginning of February with a nearly complete draft of my manuscript on Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France, and had the plan to leave at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Emile Benveniste, Fernand Braudel, Georges Dumézil, Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories, Travel, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Clémentine Fauré-Bellaïche, A Protestant Air: Gide, Sartre, Barthes, and the Religion of Literary Modernity –  Cornell University Press, June 2026

Posted on April 6, 2026 by stuartelden

Clémentine Fauré-Bellaïche, A Protestant Air: Gide, Sartre, Barthes, and the Religion of Literary Modernity –  Cornell University Press, June 2026 A Protestant Air focuses on the Protestant connection linking three intellectual giants of twentieth-century French thought: André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Roland … Continue reading →

Posted in Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

Roland Barthes and the Question of Territory – Animals, Spaces and Sound

Posted on January 25, 2026 by stuartelden

Roland Barthes only taught at the Collège de France for a short period, from the 1976-77 academic year until shortly before his premature death in early 1980. I was drawn to his lecture courses there for my current work because he sometimes … Continue reading →

Posted in André Leroi-Gourhan, Boundaries, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Music, Noam Chomsky, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Territory, Theory | 2 Comments

Jean Berthier, Voyage tranquille au pays des horreurs: Sollers, Barthes, Kristeva, Pleynet, Wahl… en Chine – Le Cherche Midi, January 2026

Posted on January 12, 2026 by stuartelden

Jean Berthier, Voyage tranquille au pays des horreurs: Sollers, Barthes, Kristeva, Pleynet, Wahl… en Chine – Le Cherche Midi, January 2026 Thanks to Barthes Studies on Bluesky for the link. Le roman documenté du voyage de Philippe Sollers, Roland Barthes, … Continue reading →

Posted in Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes | 2 Comments

Did Benveniste read Derrida’s Of Grammatology?

Posted on October 12, 2025 by stuartelden

Jacques Derrida was certainly a careful reader of Émile Benveniste. He wrote a critique of Benveniste in “Le supplément de copule. La philosophie devant la linguistique” which appeared in 1971, in a special issue of Langages, “Épistémologie de la linguistique” edited … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Felix Guattari, Ferdinand de Saussure, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Julia Kristeva, Marcel Mauss, Martin Heidegger, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment