Category Archives: Sunday Histories

Vladimir Nabokov’s original and unpublished translation of The Discourse of Igor’s Campaign; and Roman Jakobson’s enduring wish to complete his English edition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 | 5 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 | 8 Comments

The Early Edward Said, Michel Foucault and Jonathan Swift – reposted for the 90th anniversary of Said’s birth

Posted on November 1, 2025 by stuartelden

Edward Said was born 90 years ago today – one day after David Harvey. Here’s a piece on Said I wrote earlier this year about his early career – The Early Edward Said, Michel Foucault and Jonathan Swift Given all his … Continue reading →

Posted in David Harvey, Edward Said, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

David Harvey and Paris: a tribute for his 90th birthday

Posted on October 31, 2025 by stuartelden

In a retrospective of his long career, first published in 2021, David Harvey made the following claim: I have written quite a few books over the course of my academic career, beginning with Explanation in Geography (Harvey, 1969) and most recently Marx, Capital … Continue reading →

Posted in Andy Merrifield, David Harvey, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, urban/urbanisation | 3 Comments

Roman Jakobson’s paper to The First World Conference on Yiddish Studies, 1958: “The Languages of the Diaspora as a Particular Linguistic Problem”

Posted on October 26, 2025 by stuartelden

In an earlier piece in the ‘Sunday Histories’ series, I discussed the work Roman Jakobson did for Franz Boas on the Paleo-Siberian and Aleutian material at the New York Public Library. In his initial time in the United States, as a refugee from … Continue reading →

Posted in Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories | 3 Comments

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil and Benoîte Groult: the Académie française and the debate about feminine nouns for professions

Posted on October 19, 2025 by stuartelden

In his dialogues with Didier Eribon, published in 1989, Claude Lévi-Strauss commented on the linguistic work of the Académie française, and especially a campaign to amend the gender terminology of professions. Should, for example, a female politician be referred to … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil, Roger Caillois, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 4 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

From a Watershed to the Parting of the Waters: A Note on Michel Foucault and Peter Brown

Posted on October 5, 2025 by stuartelden

Back in November 2014, while I was researching Foucault’s Last Decade, I wrote “A minor note on Michel Foucault and Peter Brown: From a watershed to the parting of the waters” for this site. I was interested in Foucault’s use of an idea … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Peter Brown, Sunday Histories | 3 Comments

Jean de Menasce’s dedication to Émile Benveniste – “in memory of the year of exile”

Posted on October 1, 2025 by stuartelden

I already knew that Jean de Menasce dedicated his edition and translation of the 9th century Zoroastrian theological text Škand-Gumānīk Vičār to Émile Benveniste. Benveniste had taught de Menasce Iranian languages, especially Pahlavi, in the late 1930s at the École Pratique des Hautes … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Jean de Menasce, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Books written by French professors while prisoners of war in World War II, and the Université de Captivité in Oflag XVII-A

Posted on September 28, 2025 by stuartelden

There are many famous books written in prison, from Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy to Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Socrates’ final words in prison are dramatized by Plato in the Crito. The Marquis de Sade wrote some of his books in prison, and Miguel … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Antonio Negri, Étienne Wolff, Emmanuel Levinas, Fernand Braudel, François Ellenberger, Georges Canguilhem, Hannah Arendt, Jean Cavaillès, Jean Wahl, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Raymond Ruyer, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Walter Benjamin | 9 Comments