Émile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, Expanded Edition – HAU Books, August 2021 [now listed as February 2023]

Posted on October 31, 2022 by stuartelden

It is now listed as February 2023 – https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo101239368.html

stuartelden's avatarProgressive Geographies

Émile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, Expanded Edition – HAU Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press, August 2021 [now listed as February 2023]

First published fifty years ago, Émile Benveniste’s two-volumeProblèmes de linguistique générale revolutionized the study of linguistics and remain among the most influential texts in the field. This expanded edition of the first volume presents the original English translation by Mary ElizabethMeek, produced in close collaboration with Benveniste himself, along with his hitherto untranslated articles on play, translation, singular and plural forms, and Indigenous North American languages. These works are contextualized by an introduction by editor Jordan K. Skinner and a preface by Roland Barthes.

This new edition will delight linguists and philosophers already familiar with Benveniste and introduce his work to a new generation of students. Benveniste studies are going through an enthusiastic revival in Europe; after reading this book, readers elsewhere will understand…

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Daniel Hartley, Marxism Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide

Posted on October 29, 2022 by stuartelden

Daniel Hartley, Marxism Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide

English at historicalmaterialism.org; French at Revue Période

Marxist literary criticism investigates literature’s role in the class struggle. The best general introductions in English remain Terry Eagleton’s Marxism and Literary Criticism (Routledge, 2002 [1976]) and, a more difficult but foundational book, Fredric Jameson’s Marxism and Form (Princeton UP, 1971). The best anthology in English remains Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne’s Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (Blackwell, 1996). The bibliographic essay that follows does not aim to be exhaustive; because it is quite long, I have indicated what I take to be the major texts of the tradition with a double asterisk and bold font: **.

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Paolo Virno, The Idea of World: Public Intellect and Use of Life, translated by Lorenzo Chiesa – Seagull Books, September 2022

Posted on October 29, 2022 by stuartelden

Paolo Virno, The Idea of World: Public Intellect and Use of Life, translated by Lorenzo Chiesa – Seagull Books, September 2022

A philosophical exploration of what capitalistic societies truly mean for the individual.
 
A short vade mecum for unrepentant materialism, The Idea of World collects three essays by Italian philosopher Paulo Virno that are intricately wrapped around one another. The first essay, “Mundanity,” tries to clarify what the term “world,” as referred to as the perceptual and historical context of our existence, means—both with and against Kant and Wittgenstein. How should we understand expressions such as “worldly people,” “the course of the world,” or “getting by in this world”? The second, “Virtuosity and Revolution,” is a minor political treatise. Virno puts forward a set of concepts capable of confronting the magnetic storm that has knocked out the compasses that every reflection on the public sphere has relied on since the seventeenth century. The third, “The Use of Life”, is the shorthand delineation of a research program on the notion of use. What exactly are we doing when we use a hammer, a time span, or an ironic sentence? And, above all, what does the use of the self—of one’s own life, which lies at the basis of all uses—amount to in human existence?
 
Presenting his ideas in three distinct vignettes, Virno examines how the philosophy of language, anthropology, and political theory are inextricably linked.

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Foucault Studies. New Issue (September 2022)

Posted on October 25, 2022 by stuartelden

Foucault Studies 32 (September 2022)

Clare O'Farrell's avatarFoucault News

Foucault Studies. Number 32, September 2022

Editorial
Sverre Raffnsøe

Articles
Foucault and Brown: Disciplinary Intersections
Niki Kasumi Clements

Askesis and Critique: Foucault and Benjamin
Ori Rotlevy

UK Lockdown Governmentalities: What Does It Mean to Govern in 2020?
Seb Sander

Book Reviews
Chloë Taylor, Foucault, Feminism and Sex Crimes: An Anti-Carceral Analysis. New York, and London: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 272.
ISBN: 9781138367319 (hardback).
Kurt Borg

Aliraza Javaid, Masculinities, Sexualities and Love. Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 189.
ISBN: 978-0-8153-8065-8 (hardback).
Andrea Colombo

Cory Wimberly, How Propaganda Became Public Relations: Foucault and the Corporate Government of the Public. Routledge: New York, 2020. Pp. 214.
ISBN: 978-0-367-26314-0 (hardback).
Fabio Cescon

Niki Kasumi Clements, Sites of the Ascetic Self: John Cassian and Christian Ethical Formation. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. Pp. 280.
ISBN: 978-0-268-10785-7 (hardback).
William Tilleczek

Thomas Lemke, The Government of Things: Foucault and…

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Nigel Thrift, The Pursuit of Possibility: Redesigning Research Universities – Policy Press, October 2022

Posted on October 25, 2022 by stuartelden

Nigel Thrift, The Pursuit of Possibility: Redesigning Research Universities – Bristol University Press, October 2022

Are British research universities losing their way or are they finding a new way? 

Nigel Thrift, a well-known academic and a former Vice-Chancellor, explores recent changes in the British research university that threaten to erode the quality of these higher education institutions. He considers what a research university has now become by examining the quandaries that have arisen from a succession of misplaced strategies and false expectations.

Challenging both higher education policy and leadership, he argues that the focus on student number growth and a series of research policy missteps has upset research universities’ priorities just at a point in the history of planetary breakdown when their research is most needed.

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Longer tributes to Bruno Latour – Justin Smith, Paul Edwards & Gabrielle Hecht, Adam Tooze, Laurent Jeanpierre

Posted on October 25, 2022 by stuartelden

I shared some of the early tributes to Bruno Latour here. There are some longer discussions of his work and legacy in various places.

Justin H. Smith, A Locus of Care: Some Memories of the Life and Work of Bruno Latour (1947-2022)

Paul N. Edwards and Gabrielle Hecht, The Uncategorizable Bruno Latour (1947–2022), The Nation

Adam Tooze, Bruno Latour and the philosophy of life, The New Statesman

Laurent Jeanpierre, Bruno Latour : la destitution des Modernes, En attendant Nadeau

Happy to add further links – please add as comments.

The pieces in The New Statesman and The Nation may require registration or subscription.

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Georges Dumézil’s The Destiny of the Warrior – a work in progress

Posted on October 24, 2022 by stuartelden
The 1969 edition, a reprint of the 1985 edition, a photocopy of the 1956 text and the English translation.

Mitra-Varuna is the best place to go, in English, for Dumézil’s views on the first function of sovereignty, and its twofold nature: the first judicial and worldly, the second divine and supernatural. In French, Les Dieux souverains des Indo-Européens (Gallimard 1977) updates and expands many of these analyses, but that’s not a text available in English. The second volume of Mythe et épopée, translated as three English books – The Stakes of the Warrior, The Plight of a Sorcerer and The Destiny of a King – discusses related questions. Except for The Destiny of a King those English volumes are out of print, but the forthcoming revised edition of Mitra-Varuna is an attempt to bring some of this work back into circulation.

For the second, martial function of Dumézil’s tripartite analysis – sovereigns, warriors, producers – an English reader could look at The Stakes of the Warrior, but I think a better place to start is The Destiny of the Warrior. Again, the book is unfortunately out of print.

The book has an interesting publishing history – a 1956 text, a revised version in 1969 and a new edition in 1985. Each of these adds material to the version before, with some cuts. On this page I’ve provided an initial indication of how and where these changes were made. The English translation is of the 1969 edition, and there is about a third of the final 1985 text which is not available in translation.

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Where to start with reading Henri Lefebvre? – updated

Posted on October 24, 2022 by stuartelden

My guide Where to start with reading Henri Lefebvre? has been updated. It’s just a minor update with an updated link to On the Rural and links to the recent books by Patrick Rumsby, Henri Lefebvre, Boredom and Everyday Life (Lexington) and Christian Schmid, Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space (Verso).

This comes in response to a question to me on Twitter. Where should you start with Henri Lefebvre?

the-production-of-space-21054272

I think many people, especially in Geography, go to The Production of Space. That’s a major work, certainly, but I don’t think it’s a good place to start. It’s a difficult book, which was Lefebvre’s writing up – the theoretical culmination – of several years working on urban and, earlier, rural questions. All-too-often it is read through the lens of the first chapter – a broad, conceptual schema – and not balanced by the much more historical study found in later chapters. I’ve heard several people say that this was the first, and last, thing of Lefebvre they read, or started to read. Any serious engagement with Lefebvre has to come to terms with this book, but it’s not a good place to start.

continues here…

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Henri Lefebvre, On the Rural: Economy, Sociology, Geography reviewed at Cleveland Review of Books by John Lepley (open access)

Posted on October 24, 2022 by stuartelden

Henri Lefebvre, On the Rural: Economy, Sociology, Geography is reviewed at Cleveland Review of Books by John Lepley (open access). Here’s the final paragraph:

On the Rural is a remarkable collection. Far too many works about rural life and agriculture revolve around cliches and tropes. To be sure, Lefebvre documented customs and traditions, but he saw them in the context of a slowly-changing social landscape. These changes, moreover, were neither clear nor consistent. The slow transition of the French peasantry to farm laborers and to small capitalists was full of ambiguity, contingency, and irony. In an age of deep specialization, it’s also refreshing to read the work of someone who crossed disciplinary boundaries with ease. Lefebvre wrote as a historian, a sociologist, a geographer, a political-economist, and a philosopher. This makes for challenging reading at times but there are also brilliant passages that will goad readers on to the next page. In describing a Paris street, for example, Lefebvre’s prose is poetic: “Juxtaposed structures, from Roman ruins to banks, reproduce the ages of history in space, the succession of eras. The past is inscribed in the wounds of the stones themselves.” Just as in urban Paris, rural spaces are not devoid of history. They are products of human interventions, and On the Rural is an excellent place to learn about them. 

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Christian Schmid, Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space – Verso, November 2022

Posted on October 24, 2022 by stuartelden

Christian Schmid, Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space – Verso, November 2022

This book presents an encompassing, detailed and thorough overview and reconstruction of Lefebvre’s theory of space and of the urban.

Henri Lefebvre belongs to the generation of the great French intellectuals and philosophers, together with his contemporaries Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre. His theory has experienced a remarkable revival over the last two decades, and is discussed and applied today in many disciplines in humanities and social sciences, particularly in urban studies, geography, urban sociology, urban anthropology, architecture and planning. Lefebvre, together with David Harvey, is one of the leading and most read theoreticians in these fields.

This book explains in an accessible way the theoretical and epistemological context of this work in French philosophy and in the German dialectic (Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche), and reconstructs in detail the historical development of its different elements. It also gives an overview on the receptions of Lefebvre and discusses a wide range of applications of this theory in many research fields, such as urban and regional development, urbanization, urbanity, social space, and everyday life.

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