Category Archives: Sunday Histories

Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois and the Question of Fascism

Posted on May 31, 2026 by stuartelden

Most of Georges Bataille’s earliest writings were literary, and between 1929 and the early 1930s he was the editor of Documents, an art and literary journal (scans are available on Gallica). Most of his articles there were included in the first … Continue reading →

Posted in Alberto Toscano, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Georges Dumézil, Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Klossowski, Politics, Roger Caillois, Sunday Histories, Walter Benjamin | Leave a comment

Heidegger, Space and the New Translation of Being and Time

Posted on May 24, 2026 by stuartelden

Cyril Welch’s version of Heidegger’s Being and Time: An Annotated Translation has been published by Yale University Press, in the United States in February, and the United Kingdom in May 2026. A fuller discussion of the translation, its choices and terminology, and … Continue reading →

Posted in David Farrell Krell, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Sunday Histories | 1 Comment

Georges Dumézil, Geographer of the Russian World? (and some notes on the series in which it was supposed to appear)

Posted on May 17, 2026 by stuartelden

In 1932, the mythologist Georges Dumézil was advertised as having a forthcoming book entitled Le Monde Russe [The Russian World] for a new series called ‘Géographie pour tous’ [Geography for everyone]. The book never appeared. At the time Dumézil was teaching in … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundaries, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | Leave a comment

Maria Antonietta Macciocchi – Althusser, Gramsci, Maoism, Fascism and Pasolini

Posted on May 10, 2026 by stuartelden

Maria Antonietta Macciocchi (1922-2007) was a journalist, politician and academic. She is known for works including Daily Life in Revolutionary China (Italian and French in 1971; English in 1972). Her work on China was heavily criticised, and one example would be a … Continue reading →

Posted in Alberto Toscano, Antonio Gramsci, Italo Calvino, Louis Althusser, Luce Irigaray, Nicos Poulantzas, Sunday Histories | 4 Comments

Lucien Gerschel bibliography (and other research resources)

Posted on May 5, 2026 by stuartelden

I’ve written about Lucien Gerschel in two posts in my ‘Sunday Histories‘ series – Lucien Gerschel, Georges Dumézil, William Shakespeare and the history of Coriolanus and The Tragic Death of Lucien Gerschel and his Posthumous Text on the Finnish Sampo. He was a student … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Lucien Gerschel, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | Leave a comment

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 | 4 Comments

The Tragic Death of Lucien Gerschel and his Posthumous Text on the Finnish Sampo

Posted on April 26, 2026 by stuartelden

In a previous piece in this series, I discussed Georges Dumézil’s student and colleague Lucien Gerschel and their discussions of the Roman general Coriolanus. Gerschel had attended lectures by Dumézil at the École Pratique des Hautes Études shortly before the Second World War. … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Lucien Gerschel, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | 2 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

Julia Kristeva’s portrait of Émile Benveniste in The Samurai

Posted on April 19, 2026 by stuartelden

Julia Kristeva’s first novel The Samurai was published in 1990. It’s not the greatest novel, but it’s well known that the book is a thinly disguised autobiography, with the central character Olga Morena modelled on herself. Many of the famous names of … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

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 | 3 Comments