D Caboret, P Garrone: Avant-garde and Mission: Tiqqunery (1999) [French/English]

A critical study guide for readers of Tiqqun magazine.

“Addressed in 1999 to a small group of persons, the following text was intended to describe in general the philosophical and religious affiliations that the members of the magazine Tiqqun associated themselves with either explicitly or implicitly.” (from the introduction)

Publisher Friends of LHOOQ, Paris
Second edition, 2002

authors

PDF [French]
PDF [English]
View online (HTML) [English]

Gabriel Tarde: The Laws of Imitation (1890/1903) [French/English]

“Among the phenomena that early arrested his attention was imitation. From his office of magistrate he observed the large part that imitation plays in criminal conduct. Does it play a smaller part in normal conduct? Very rapidly M. Tarde’s ardent mind ranged over the field of history, followed the spread of Western civilisation, and reviewed the development of language, the evolution of art, of law, and of institutions. The evidence was overwhelming that in all the affairs of men, whether of good or of evil report, imitation is an ever-present factor; and to a philosophical mind the implication was obvious, that there must be psychological or sociological laws of imitation, worthy of most thorough study. [..] Tarde perceived that imitation, as a social form, is only one mode of a universal activity, of that endless repetition, through­out nature, which in the physical realm we know as the undulations of ether, the vibra­tions of material bodies, the swing of the planets in their orbits, the alter­nations of light and darkness, and of seasons, the suc­cession of life and death. Here, then, was not only a fundamental truth of social science, but also a first principle of cosmic philosophy.” (from the Introduction)

Les lois de l’imitation: étude sociologique
Publisher Félix Alcan, Paris, 1890
432 pages

English edition
Translated from the second French edition by Elsie Clews Parsons
With an Introduction by Franklin H. Giddings
Publisher Henry Holt and Company, New York, September 1903
404 pages

announcement (The New York Times, 1903)

google books [French]
google books [English]

PDF [French]
PDF [English]
PDF (more formats) [English]

Richard Wolin: The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (2010)

“Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and Jean-Luc Godard. During the 1960s, a who’s who of French thinkers, writers, and artists, spurred by China’s Cultural Revolution, were seized with a fascination for Maoism. Combining a merciless exposé of left-wing political folly and cross-cultural misunderstanding with a spirited defense of the 1960s, The Wind from the East tells the colorful story of this legendary period in France. Richard Wolin shows how French students and intellectuals, inspired by their perceptions of the Cultural Revolution, and motivated by utopian hopes, incited grassroots social movements and reinvigorated French civic and cultural life.

Wolin’s riveting narrative reveals that Maoism’s allure among France’s best and brightest actually had little to do with a real understanding of Chinese politics. Instead, it paradoxically served as a vehicle for an emancipatory transformation of French society. French student leftists took up the trope of “cultural revolution,” applying it to their criticisms of everyday life. Wolin examines how Maoism captured the imaginations of France’s leading cultural figures, influencing Sartre’s “perfect Maoist moment”; Foucault’s conception of power; Sollers’s chic, leftist intellectual journal Tel Quel; as well as Kristeva’s book on Chinese women–which included a vigorous defense of foot-binding.

Recounting the cultural and political odyssey of French students and intellectuals in the 1960s, The Wind from the East illustrates how the Maoist phenomenon unexpectedly sparked a democratic political sea change in France.”

Publisher Princeton University Press, 2010
ISBN 0691129983, 9780691129983
400 pages

Video interview with the author: Platypus.

Reviews: Scott McLemee (The National), Julian Jackson (The Guardian), David Gress (The Wall Street Journal).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2023-4-25)