Category Archives: Sunday Histories

Boris Porshnev – from peasant revolts in 17th century France to cryptozoology and the quest for the Soviet Yeti

Posted on December 14, 2025 by stuartelden

I first read the work of the Soviet historian Boris Fyodorovich Porshnev because of Michel Foucault. (His name is sometimes transliterated, especially in France, as Porchnev.) In his 1971-72 Collège de France lectures, Penal Theories and Institutions, Foucault spends the first … Continue reading →

Posted in Boris Porshnev, Foucault: The Birth of Power, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Huguette Fugier’s study of the vocabulary of the sacred in Latin, and Giorgio Agamben’s other sources for the notion of the homo sacer

Posted on December 7, 2025 by stuartelden

Huguette Fugier’s 1963 book Recherches sur l’expression du sacré dans la langue latine seems little known today, which is unfortunate given its interest and importance. In the opening lines, she describes it is “a study of historical semantics, applied to the Roman … Continue reading →

Posted in Giorgio Agamben, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

100 years since the Locarno Treaties and territorial integrity today

Posted on November 30, 2025 by stuartelden

On 1 December 1925, the Locarno Treaties were signed by Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium and Italy, with some of the additional treaties also including Poland and Czechoslovakia as signatories. Negotiated in Switzerland in October, the final signing was in … Continue reading →

Posted in Jean Gottmann, Politics, Sunday Histories, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Birth of Territory, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Michel Foucault’s 24 May 1979 paper on hermaphrodites to the Arcadie conference

Posted on November 26, 2025 by stuartelden

An earlier piece discussed the recently published Les Hermaphrodites, a manuscript by Foucault from the mid-late 1970s, at one point destined for a volume of the History of Sexuality. I also outlined the different plans Foucault discussed for the structure of the History of Sexuality series – … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Paul Veyne, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Gordon and Tina Wasson, Slavic Studies in the Cold War, and the Hallucinogenic Mushroom

Posted on November 23, 2025 by stuartelden

R. Gordon Wasson was Vice President at the American investment bank J.P. Morgan & Co., a major supporter of Slavic Studies in the United States during the Cold War, and fascinated by hallucinogenic mushrooms.  His wife, Valentina Pavlovna Wasson was … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Foucault’s Multiple Plans for his History of Sexuality

Posted on November 16, 2025 by stuartelden

Some years ago, Philippe Chevallier alerted me to the importance of the 1977 German translation of the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality as Sexualität und Wahrheit: Der Wille zum Wissen. This text included a brief preface by Foucault … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 30 – archive work in Paris, Bern and Cambridge, MA, and Benveniste’s library

Posted on November 12, 2025 by stuartelden

The formal end of the Leverhulme major research fellowship for the Indo-European thought project was at the end of September, but I have a no-cost extension until the end of January. This is invaluable, and is effectively to extend the grant for … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Claude Lévi-Strauss, David Harvey, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Erwin Panofsky, Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Derrida, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Books received – Foucault, Duby, Stratford, Hage, Ramnoux

Posted on November 11, 2025 by stuartelden

The newly published transcription of Foucault’s 1972 course in Buffalo, two autobiographical accounts by Georges Duby, Elaine Stratford’s remarkable book The Drowned: Elements of Loss and Repair, Ghassan Hage, Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Economy of Being, and the two volumes of … Continue reading →

Posted in Clémence Ramnoux, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Sunday Histories | Leave a comment

Vladimir Nabokov’s original and unpublished translation of The Discourse of Igor’s Campaign; and Roman Jakobson’s enduring wish to complete his English edition

Posted on November 9, 2025 by stuartelden

In two previous pieces in the ‘Sunday Histories’ series, I have discussed the planned but unrealised collaboration between Vladimir Nabokov and Roman Jakobson on an edition and translation of “The Song of Igor”, an old Russian poem of the 12th century. Jakobson had … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Vladimir Nabokov | 4 Comments

Foucault’s Hermaphrodites – from Herculine Barbin to a planned volume of the History of Sexuality and the recently published manuscript

Posted on November 2, 2025 by stuartelden

In May 1978, Foucault edited the memoir of a “hermaphrodite”, Herculine Barbin, for publication. In the dossier of documents appended to that text he says that “the question of strange destinies like these and which posed such problems for medicine … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Canguilhem (book), Foucault's Last Decade, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault | 4 Comments