Category Archives: Sunday Histories

The Friendship between Hannah Arendt, Alexandre Koyré and Horace Kallen

Posted on October 18, 2026 by stuartelden

I’ve written before about the friendship between Hannah Arendt and Alexandre Koyré, and a little about different aspects of Arendt and Koyré’s careers. Koyré’s letters to Arendt have been published by Paola Zambelli, but Arendt’s to Koyré are presumed lost. Both … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Hannah Arendt, Horace Kallen, Martin Heidegger, Sunday Histories | 1 Comment

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations, contents and a guide to the English translations – updated to include all volumes

Posted on October 16, 2026 by stuartelden

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations, contents and a guide to the English translations – the list has been updated to include all volumes of the first edition Previously the list included just the first five volumes of the first edition. I added … Continue reading →

Posted in Jean-Paul Sartre, Sunday Histories | Leave a comment

The Foucault centenary

Posted on October 15, 2026 by stuartelden

Today is the 100th anniversary of Michel Foucault’s birth. A lot of publications and events have been timed to coincide with this. Here are a few. Update 19 October 2026 – a few more here, including a remarkable video interview, … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Foucault: The Birth of Power, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, The Early Foucault, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Forty years since the death of Georges Dumézil and fifty since that of Émile Benveniste

Posted on October 11, 2026 by stuartelden

Today marks forty years since the death of Georges Dumézil (1898-1986); it was fifty years since the death of Émile Benveniste (1902-1976) a few days ago. Benveniste and Dumézil are the main focus of my very long manuscript Mapping Indo-European … Continue reading →

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

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations and the chronology of his exchange with Claude Lefort about communism

Posted on October 11, 2026 by stuartelden

Back in 2024 I complained about how hard it was to navigate Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations. I went looking for the French version of “What is a Collaborator?”, only to find it was in volume III of the original edition and volume II … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lefort, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Further challenges with the references to Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic

Posted on October 4, 2026 by stuartelden

In an earlier post in this series I discussed a misplaced reference in Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic, where Foucault’s reference pointed to a book by S.A.D. Tissot but the actual source of the quotation was a text by Archibald Pitcairn. In that … Continue reading →

Posted in Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Stuart Elden, “Writing the ‘Sunday histories’ – an experiment in sharing short pieces on a blog”, in the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly “Reflections on Writing” Series (open access)

Posted on October 2, 2026 by stuartelden

Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly has a “Reflections on Writing” Series – all pieces are open access My contribution “Writing the ‘Sunday histories’ – an experiment in sharing short pieces on a blog” is now available. My thanks to Mark Flear … Continue reading →

Posted in Publishing, Sunday Histories, Writing | Leave a comment

Working with the Michel Foucault archives – a brief guide to what is in Paris, Normandy, Berkeley and elsewhere

Posted on September 27, 2026 by stuartelden

I am sometimes contacted by people who want advice about working with Michel Foucault’s archives. Although I’m generally happy to try to help, and there are others who are better placed to advise on specifics, I thought it might be … Continue reading →

Posted in Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories | 2 Comments

Georges Dumézil’s journalism and his 1924 account of the Tutankhamun discovery 

Posted on September 20, 2026 by stuartelden

In November 1922, the British archaeologist Howard Carter first opened the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor. In March 1924, the French comparative mythologist Georges Dumézil wrote a short newspaper piece about the Egyptian pharaoh. … Continue reading →

Posted in Didier Eribon, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | 2 Comments

No, not that Henri Lefebvre – The Missing Pieces

Posted on September 13, 2026 by stuartelden

I’ve mentioned this before, but the Henri Lefebvre who wrote Les unités perdues (2004, 2011), translated by David L. Sweet as The Missing Pieces (2014), is not the Henri Lefebvre who wrote The Production of Space and The Critique of Everyday Life, among many other works.  For one thing, … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam David Morton, Henri Lefebvre, Sunday Histories | 3 Comments