Category Archives: Sunday Histories

Georges Redard and the Linguistic Atlas of Iranian Speakers

Posted on April 12, 2026 by stuartelden

After Émile Benveniste suffered a major stroke in late 1969, his former student and friend Georges Redard planned to publish some of Benveniste’s incomplete projects. Redard was by this time teaching at the University of Bern in Switzerland. One volume … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Two dedications from Georges Dumézil – to Alfred Ernoux and Luc Estang

Posted on April 8, 2026 by stuartelden

With only rare exceptions, I’ve not tended to buy second-hand books with a view to the edition or dedications. Generally, I’ve been getting hold of copies because of the content, and the relatively few times I’ve looked for a first … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Bataille, Georges Dumézil, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Maurice Blanchot’s Politics and His War-Time Reviews of Georges Dumézil

Posted on April 5, 2026 by stuartelden

The philosopher, literary theorist and novelist Maurice Blanchot’s politics have come under periodic scrutiny. Leslie Hill describes the source of the controversy:  As early as 1931 and 1932, while starting out with the Journal des débats, Blanchot was writing political articles … Continue reading →

Posted in Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Georges Dumézil, Jean-Paul Sartre, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Maurice Blanchot, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Foucault’s 1972 visit to Attica prison

Posted on March 29, 2026 by stuartelden

In April 1972, during his second teaching visit to SUNY Buffalo, Michel Foucault visited Attica prison. The two visits to Buffalo are important for his teaching, which I discuss briefly here and in more detail in a piece in Foucault Studies. Leonhard Riep discusses … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault: The Birth of Power, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The limited copies of the 1940 edition of Georges Dumézil’s Mitra-Varuna

Posted on March 22, 2026 by stuartelden

In 1943, the American librarian and Sanskrit scholar Horace Poleman wrote a review of Georges Dumézil’s 1940 book Mitra-Varuna: Essai sur deux représentations indo-européennes de la souveraineté for the Journal of the American Oriental Society. Interestingly, given the accusations made of Dumézil’s politics, Poleman … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Books on Territory I Didn’t Write, and the Related Articles I Did

Posted on March 15, 2026 by stuartelden

At various points over the last twenty-five years or so, I’ve debated writing different books on territory. Many of the articles I’ve written on this topic were early versions of parts of the books I did write on territory, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam David Morton, Antonio Negri, Carl Schmitt, Felix Guattari, Gaston Gordillo, Gilles Deleuze, Grégoire Chamayou, Henri Lefebvre, Jean Gottmann, Jeremy Crampton, Luiza Bialasiewicz, Michael Hardt, Michel Foucault, My Publications, Neil Brenner, Paul Virilio, Peter Sloterdijk, Philip Steinberg, Shakespearean Territories, Sunday Histories, terrain, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Birth of Territory, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Walter Bruno Henning, Franz Altheim and the Politics of Reviews

Posted on March 8, 2026 by stuartelden

In 1949, the German born and naturalised British scholar Walter Bruno Henning wrote to the Iranian politician and diplomat Hassan Taqizadeh. In his letter, he shared his view of Franz Altheim’s Weltgeschichte Asiens im griechischen Zeitalter [World History of Asia in the Greek Era], … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Roger Caillois, Sunday Histories | 2 Comments

A 1970 French interdisciplinary seminar on structuralism, organised by Gilbert Gadoffre, André Lichnerowicz and François Perroux, and attended by Suzanne Bachelard, Pierre Bourdieu, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, André Martinet, Jacques Monod, Clémence Ramnoux, Michel Serres, Gilbert Simondon and René Thom

Posted on March 1, 2026 by stuartelden

An interdisciplinary seminar on structuralism was held in France in September 1970. Attended by a wide range of speakers, it was an interesting moment in the French reception of this trend in ‘French theory’. Back in October 2022 I posted a … Continue reading →

Posted in Clémence Ramnoux, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, Pierre Bourdieu, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The French contributors to Herman Hirt’s 1936 Festschrift – Linguistics, Nationalism and Nazism

Posted on February 22, 2026 by stuartelden

In their important piece examining the stakes of the 1930s debate about Caucasian linguistics between Georges Dumézil and Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Stefanos Geroulanos and Jamie Philips indicate that Dumézil was one of the contributors to a 1936 Festschrift for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Stefanos Geroulanos, Sunday Histories | 1 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 | 4 Comments