François Dosse: History of Structuralism, 2 vols. (1991–) [BR-PT, EN, ES]

11 September 2013, dusan

“Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault—the ideas of this group of French intellectuals who propounded structuralism and poststructuralism have had a profound impact on disciplines ranging from literary theory to sociology, from anthropology to philosophy, from history to psychoanalysis. In this long-awaited translation, History of Structuralism examines the thinkers who made up the movement, providing a fascinating elucidation of a central aspect of postwar intellectual history.

François Dosse tells the story of structuralism from its beginnings in postwar Paris, a city dominated by the towering figure of Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Saussure became the point of departure for a group of younger scholars, and the outcome was not only the doom of Sartre as intellectual leader but the birth of a movement that would come to reconfigure French intellectual life and would eventually reverberate throughout the Western world.

Dosse provides a readable, intelligible overall account, one that shows the interrelationship among the central currents of structuralism and situates them in context. Dosse illuminates the way developments in what are usually distinct fields came to exert such influence on each other, showing how the early structuralists paved the way for later developments and for recent discourses such as postmodernism. The cast of characters related by Dosse includes those mentioned above as well as Roman Jakobson, Julia Kristeva, Pierre Bourdieu, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Tzvetan Todorov, and many others. Chapters are devoted to major figures, and Dosse has done extensive interviews with the major and minor figures of the movement, furnishing an intellectual history in which historical players look back at the period.

This first comprehensive history of the structuralist movement is an essential guide to a major moment in the development of twentieth-century thought, one that provides a cogent map to a dizzying array of personalities and their ideas. It will be compelling reading for those interested in philosophy, literary theory, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and psychoanalysis.”

First published in French as Histoire du structuralisme, Éditions La Découverte, Paris, 1991, 1992

English edition
Translated by Deborah Glassman
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 1997
ISBN 0816622418, 9780816622412 & 0816623716, 9780816623716
488 & 534 pages

Publisher (EN)

História do estruturalismo I (BR-Portuguese, trans. Álvaro Cabral, 1993, added on 2024-1-20)
História do estruturalismo II (BR-Portuguese, trans. Álvaro Cabral, 1994, added on 2024-1-20)

History of Structuralism, 1: The Rising Sign, 1945-1966 (English, trans. Deborah Glassman, 1997, via falsedeity)
History of Structuralism, 2: The Sign Sets, 1967-Present (English, trans. Deborah Glassman, 1997)

Historia del estructuralismo I (Spanish, trans. María del Mar Llinares, 2004)
Historia del estructuralismo II (Spanish, trans. María del Mar Llinares, 2004)

Michel Foucault: The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (1966–) [FR, IT, ES, EN, SH, DE, RU, PT, GR, TR, RO, ZH, CZ]

4 July 2013, dusan

“When one defines “order” as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Things, possibly one of the most significant, yet most overlooked, works of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by his later work on power and discourse, nonetheless it was The Order of Things that established Foucault’s reputation as an intellectual giant. Pirouetting around the outer edge of language, Foucault unsettles the surface of literary writing. In describing the limitations of our usual taxonomies, he opens the door onto a whole new system of thought, one ripe with what he calls “exotic charm”. Intellectual pyrotechnics from the master of critical thinking, this book is crucial reading for those who wish to gain insight into that odd beast called Postmodernism, and a must for any fan of Foucault.”

Publisher Gallimard, Paris, 1966
ISBN 2070224848
404 pages

English edition
With Foreword to the English edition by Michel Foucault
First published by Tavistock Publications, 1970
Publisher Routledge, London/New York, 1989/2005
ISBN 0415267366
422 pages

interview with the author (video, 14 min, 1966, in French)
wikipedia (FR)
wikipedia (EN)

Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (French, 1966)
Le parole e le cose. Un’archeologia delle scienze umane (Italian, trans. Emilio Panaitescu, 1967)
Las palabras y las cosas. una arqueología de las ciencias humanas (Spanish, trans. Elsa Cecilia Frost, 1968)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (English, trans. unknown, Pantheon Books, 1971, no OCR)
Riječi i stvari. Arheologija humanističkih znanosti (Serbocroatian, trans. Sreten Marić, 1971)
Die Ordnung der Dinge. Eine Archäologie der Humanwissenschaften (German, trans. Ulrich Köppen, 1971/74, 14 MB, no OCR)
Слова и вещи. Археология гуманитарных наук (Russian, trans. В. П. Визгин and Н. С. Автономова, 1977/94)
As Palavras e as Coisas: Uma arqueologia das ciências humanas (Portuguese, trans. Salma Tannus Muchail, 8th ed., 1981/2000)
Οι λέξεις και τα πράγματα. Μια αρχαιολογία των επιστημών του ανθρώπου (Greek, trans. Κωστής Παπαγιώργης, 1986)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (English, trans. unknown, Vintage Books, 1971/1994, PDF), EPUB
Kelimeler ve şeyler. Insan bilimlerinin bir arkeolojisi (Turkish, trans. Mehmet Ali Kılıçbay, 2nd ed, 1994/2001)
Cuvintele și Lucrurile, o arheologie a științelor umane (Romanian, trans. Boghdan Ghiu and Mircea Vasilescu, 1996)
词与物 (Chinese, trans. unknown, 2002)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (English, trans. unknown, Routledge, 1970/2005)
Slova a věci (Czech, trans. Jan Rubáš, 2007, 51 MB)

Carl Freedman: The Age of Nixon: A Study in Cultural Power (2012)

1 December 2012, dusan

Applies Marxism and psychoanalysis to the study of American politics. In America, every age is the Age of Nixon.

The fundamental argument of this book is, first, that Richard Nixon, though not generally regarded as a charismatic or emotionally outgoing politician like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, did establish profound psychic connections with the American people, connections that can be detected both in the brilliant electoral success that he enjoyed for most of his career and in his ultimate defeat during the Watergate scandal; and, second and even more important, that these connections are symptomatic of many of the most important currents in American life. The book is not just a work of political history or political biography but a study of cultural power: that is, a study in the ways that culture shapes our politics and frames our sense of possibilities and values. In its application of Marxist, psychoanalytic, and other theoretical tools to the study of American electoral politics, and in a way designed for the general as well as for the academic reader, it is a new kind of book.

Publisher Zero Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing, 2012
ISBN 1846949432, 9781846949432
295 pages

commentary (Steven Shaviro)

publisher
google books

PDF (EPUB)