Cette édition présentée et annotée des textes publiés par Éric Weil dans la revue Critique, revue générale des publications françaises et étrangères fondée par Georges Bataille en 1946, complète le corpus déjà vaste de l’œuvre philosophique de Weil. Elle situe son activité dans le cadre de la politique éditoriale de la revue et des rapports riches et complexes entre Weil et Bataille. Elle met en évidence la singularité de la pratique philosophique de Weil, entre les grands livres théoriques – Logique de la philosophie, Philosophie politique, Philosophie morale – et les analyses historiques et politiques concrètes des Essais et conférences. Partant de comptes rendus d’ouvrages qui témoignent de la vie intellectuelle de l’après-guerre, Weil traite en profondeur de l’Allemagne, des États-Unis, de l’URSS, de l’Angleterre, de l’avenir de l’Europe, de l’éducation en démocratie … Ses articles et notes critiques ouvrent sur une passionnante diversité de sujets et d’auteurs, connus ou moins connus.
My review of Marcelo Hoffman’s remarkable book Foucault in Brazil is scheduled to appear in Political Theory next year, but is now available online first. Many thanks to Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson for asking me to write the review, and Marcelo for such a good book to discuss.
The review is subscription only, but if you want to read it and you can’t get a copy another way, email me or request on ResearchGate. Here are the first two paragraphs:
Michel Foucault made five visits to Brazil—one in 1965 and four in the mid-1970s. All took place under the military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 until 1985. Each time, Foucault delivered important lectures, some of which were published in his lifetime while others have remained largely unknown. In 1965, he gave a course on his book-in-progress, Les mots et les choses, translated as The Order of Things. The course manuscript is an early draft of the book itself and is due to be edited by Philippe Sabot for the new series of “Cours et travaux” (“Courses and Works”) that precede Foucault’s time at the Collège de France. In 1973, Foucault gave five lectures in Rio de Janeiro, which have been translated as “Truth and Juridical Forms.” In 1974, he gave a number of lectures on social medicine and public health, of which three have been published. In 1975, he gave a course on sexuality, which preceded the first volume of The History of Sexuality the following year and which gave valuable insight into the originally envisioned plan for its subsequent unpublished volumes. It is due to be published in Généalogies de la sexualité. In 1976, his last visit, he gave lectures of which “The Meshes of Power” is the key published source. During these visits, he spent time with academics and students, activists and friends. There were some important interviews with Brazilian interlocutors and discussions following some of the lectures.
In his remarkable book, Foucault in Brazil: Dictatorship, Resistance, and Solidarity, Marcelo Hoffman adds significantly to our understanding of this period of Foucault’s career. It comes after two other important contributions—Heliana de Barros Conde Rodrigues’s Ensaios sobre Michel Foucault no Brasil (2016; translated into French in 2020) and an issue of the Carceral Notebooks on “Foucault and the Politics of Resistance in Brazil,” edited by Hoffman himself in 2017. The lectures that have been published from Foucault’s visits have also been discussed in various works. Hoffman suggests that previous discussions of the lectures have missed the specifically Brazilian context in which they were delivered and that Conde Rodrigues provides a great deal of context but relatively little on the content of the lectures (6). Hoffman’s aim, and his major contribution, is to resituate the intellectual projects Foucault outlines within the specifics of the place in which and the audience to which they were delivered. The political context is brought, importantly, to the fore.
Foucault’s Critical Philosophy of History: Unfolding the Present provides a comprehensive interpretation of Foucault’s work by focusing on its methodological, procedural, and epistemological elements. Adam Takács argues that despite all its thematic and analytical diversity, Foucault’s procedure can be understood within a unified framework based on the historical problematization of the present. This procedure, triggered by current social issues and aiming at a diagnostic screening of the present through a constructive exploration of the past, thus sets in motion not only a specific philosophical vision of history and a research practice often related to the procedures of historiography, but also new ways of critical analysis of social phenomena. This book subjects all these elements to a systematic analysis, demonstrating that within this framework, Foucault’s often debated views on historical realism and constructivism—his methodological choices and ontological commitments—take on a coherent profile, culminating in a timely social critical project of “liberation of knowledge” and “political subjectivation.”
Explores the Canada–US border through a variety of theoretical, cultural and literary approaches
Includes chapters discussing the work of Wayde Compton
Includes chapters discussing Native American Literature and Border Theory
Features case studies of the Detroit River and Twin Towns along the Canada–US and Mexico–US Borders
Includes an afterword by Victor Konrad
Presents a chronology of events at the Canada-US Border
Moving beyond border studies paradigms dominated by the Mexico–US border, this collection aims to contextualise cultures and communities within a wider global understanding of border thinking. It builds on recent considerations of, and changes to, the cultural life of (and across) the Canada–US border, to prioritise theoretical reflections on representations, identities and policies. Approaching the border as a place, a theory, a practice and a process, this collection draws attention to the ways in which aspects of the Canada–US border itself (re)frame discussions of the borderlands as sites that continue to evoke, invoke and provoke ideas of nation and post nationalism; negotiation and imposition; resistance and refusal.
Speakers: Annagiulia Canesso (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore/Università degli Studi Padova), Stuart Elden (University of Warwick), Giulia Gandolfi (Università Ca’Foscari Venezia/Karlsruhe), Monica Greco (University of Bath), Pierre-Olivier Méthot (Université Laval), Caio Souto (Universidade Federal do Amazonas), Federico Testa (University of Bristol).
In Paris I followed up on some connections between Koyré and two people I’d worked on before – Georges Canguilhem and Jean Gottmann. The Canguilhem-Koyré link is well known, since both are seen as key figures in a French tradition in epistemology and the history of the sciences. Their connections are the topic of my contribution to the Bristol workshop next week organised by Federico Testa and Pierre-Olivier Méthot. My main source of material was CAPHÉS at the ENS, but I also found something useful at the Archives Nationales. The main Koyré archive is at the Humathèque-Condorcet, but I know that’s a much larger collection which would take a lot of time. I have been avoiding opening up that as a line of research as I know it will take me away from the Indo-European project too much. But the CAPHÉS material was just a morning’s worth of work, at least for now, and it was helpful for the Bristol paper, which I hope will be published in some form.
I also found, while looking for something else in the BnF catalogue, that there are some letters between Koyré and Gottmann, another Russian-born French naturalised citizen who, being Jewish, also spent the war years in the United States. Gottmann was a generation younger, but taught at the École Libre des Hautes Études, which Koyré led for a couple of years. As well as many writings on urban questions, Gottmann was the author of The Significance of Territory, which I found very useful for my own work on that topic and which I wrote about here. I had half-wondered if the correspondence between Koyré and Gottmann might be in Russian, but fortunately for me it’s in French. And it was quite interesting.
It was most revealing for Koyré’s role as secretary general of the ELHE, since most of the letters are from him. (There is little correspondence in the Koyré archive, apparently.) But there is one interesting draft from Gottmann at the BnF, about one of the courses he taught. This file is probably most useful if I do more on Koyré, but nonetheless interesting to see. It’s held in the Salle Cartes et Plans, in a different part of the Richelieu site which I hadn’t used before. It’s a remarkable space, part of the newly renovated site. I know António de Ferrez Oliveira has used the Fonds Gottmann in his work (see, for example this essay), as has Luca Muscarà for his book on Gottmann, but I hadn’t had a reason to visit before this.
A genre-bending blend of naturalism, memoir, and social manifesto for rewilding the city, the self, andsociety.
A Natural History of Empty Lots is a genre-defying work of nature writing, literary nonfiction, and memoir that explores what happens when nature and the city intersect.
During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an empty lot in an industrial section of Austin, Texas. The property—abandoned and full of litter and debris—was an unlikely site for a home. Brown had become fascinated with these empty lots around Austin, so-called “ruined” spaces once used for agriculture and industry awaiting their redevelopment. He discovered them to be teeming with natural activity, and embarked on a twenty-year project to live in and document such spaces. There, in our most damaged landscapes, he witnessed the remarkable resilience of wild nature, and how we can heal ourselves by healing the Earth.
Beautifully written and philosophically hard-hitting, A Natural History of Empty Lots offers a new lens on human disruption and nature, offering a sense of hope among the edgelands.
There are many things I find interesting in the life and work of Alexandre Koyré, and I’ve already published on one of these – his unsuccessful attempt to get elected to a chair at the Collège de France (open access in History of European Ideas). I have also been writing a piece on Georges Canguilhem and Koyré for a workshop, and that paper opens up a wider discussion of his situation within a French tradition in the history of sciences, and beyond. I am also interested in his time in the United States during and after the war, and hope that when I am in the US next year I will be able to uncover a bit more of the story in archives there.
His teaching in Paris before and after the war is also important, and there are various archives which would add detail to what I already know. After the war he often taught in both the US and Paris each academic year, as well as spending regular time at the IAS in Princeton. There is more to be said about all this, I think.
But before he went to the US he also had visiting posts in Cairo, at what was originally the Egyptian University, then the King Fuad University and is now the University of Cairo. Paola Zambelli’s biography of Koyré gives the dates as 1933-34, 1936-37, February to June 1940 and 1940-41. In 1941 he joined the Free French and from there went on to New York. His work there as the first general secretary of the École Libre des Hautes Études has been discussed in some histories of French intellectuals in New York, particularly by Emmanuelle Loyer.
But I think we know less about his work in Cairo. His Trois leçons sur Descartes, later republished as Entretiens sur Descartes, contains three lectures first given there. The first publication was French/Arabic in 1937, the second in French alone in 1944. The first version maintains the spoken form more, which is edited out of the reprint. The lectures are later included in re-editions of hisIntroduction à Platon, but though the first part of the book has been translated as Discovering Plato, I don’t think the Descartes material is in English. The copy of the Trois leçons I saw in Paris was the one Koyré gave to Alexandre Kojève, with a very brief dedication.
In Cairo Koyré lived in Zamalek, and I’ve seen some letters he sent from there, in particular to Henry Corbin – the Islamic scholar and, among other things, Heidegger translator. But other letters I’ve seen are from earlier or later periods of his life. The letters to Edmund Husserl are much earlier, while his surviving letters to Hannah Arendt, for example, are all later than this period.
Koyré was following in the footsteps of André Lalande, and among their students was Abdul Rahman Badawi. Some online sources suggest Koyré supervised Badawi’s doctoral thesis, but a more reliable obituary says Lalande initially, and then Koyré, supervised Badawi’s master’s level thesis on the problem of death in existentialist philosophy, written in French. It was published only in 1964, but it’s not easy to find. Badawi went on to write a doctoral thesis, Le temps existentiel, in Arabic. Given the importance of Badawi’s work in Arabic philosophy, this is quite significant. Sevinç Yasargil has an interesting piece on Badawi in the Heidegger in the Islamicate Worldcollection. Koyré was therefore an important figure in introducing both France to phenomenology and Egypt to existentialism.
I think Louis Massignon was also teaching in Cairo still too, which perhaps gives another connection. Koyré’s work in Cairo is briefly discussed in Yoav Di-Capua’s work on Arab existentialism, but on this point doesn’t seem to add much beyond other sources.
Zambelli’s biography equally doesn’t have much information about this part of his career. She actually spends much of the section on this discussing the courses on Hegel in Paris for which Koyré had to find teaching cover for in his absence. That is certainly an interesting story since his replacement was Kojève, and those lectures are very famous. The historian and philosopher of chemistry, Hélène Metzger also covered some of his teaching, and on this and much else about Metzger, Cristina Chimisso’s book is an invaluable guide. But the period seems interesting not just for who took over from him in Paris, but what Koyré himself did in Cairo.
And beyond what I outline above, I’ve not found much.
I say a bit more about his role in a European network of ideas here, with some reading suggestions. I also have said something some of the archival links to Georges Canguilhem and Jean Gottmann.
The French publication of three lectures on Descartes, first given in Cairo
Rooted in the long and heterodox history of Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, the Antipode Book Series publishes innovative monographs which push at the boundaries of radical geographical thinking, and which are rigorous and substantive in theoretical and empirical terms. Authors are encouraged to critique and challenge settled orthodoxies and to rearticulate frameworks for understanding, while engaging the context of intellectual traditions and their particular trajectories. Books should put new research or critical analyses to work to contribute to strengthening a Left politics broadly defined. This includes, but is not limited to, attention to how politics of class, gender, race, colonialism, sexuality, ability are a core part of radical theory and politics.
Published by the University of California Press, the Antipode Book Series offers some of the best and most provocative geographical work available today—work from both geographers and fellow travellers in adjacent disciplines, from scholars both eminent and emerging. It welcomes submissions from all places, including the global South and/or from those traditionally marginalised in the academy (historically under-represented groups, regions, countries, and institutions). We’re also open to work rooted in a range of Left intellectual and political traditions, as well as work that crosses the boundaries between them and that puts them in conversation. In this respect the Antipode Book Series seeks to both represent the full breadth of radical geographical scholarship and to push at its limits in generative ways.
Reconfigures our concept of nature through the concept of the element
Evaluates and builds upon Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to the twentieth century return to the Greek idea of nature as a dynamic principle
Utilizes the phenomenological tradition to offer a new interpretation of the relationship between philosophy and its origin in mythological modes of thought
Integrates Merleau-Ponty into the history of philosophy
Articulates a new ontology for the ecological age
Presents the first book-length study of a key concept in Merleau-Ponty’s late thought: the idea of being as element
Taylor Knight reveals the way in which phenomenology initiates a return to ontology construed through a dialectical relationship between being and element. Within phenomenology’s return to the elemental, Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy is a key locus, opening critical paths forward into an ontology for the ecological age. With reference to his phenomenological forebears – Heidegger, Husserl, Levinas – his non-phenomenological influences – Bachelard, Schelling, Freud – and his dialogue with Greek thought – Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle – Knight shows what is authentically new in Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology.
