In 1990 the Department of Graphic Arts at the Louvre made their holdings available to guest curators for a program called "Parti Pris," or "Taking Sides." In this program, major cultural figures outside of the discipline of art history organized exhibitions based on the department's collection. Within its first several years, this novel collaboration produced exhibitions curated by philosopher Jacques Derrida and filmmaker Peter Greenaway. Jean Starobinski, noted literary critic and intellectual historian from the University of Geneva, was selected as the third curator in the program. In...
In 1990 the Department of Graphic Arts at the Louvre made their holdings available to guest curators for a program called "Parti Pris," or "Taking Sid...
Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her death, this intellectual biography of Colette--the final volume of Julia Kristeva's trilogy "Female Genius"--will be considered a major breakthrough in understanding one of the great creative minds of the twentieth century. Colette (1873-1954) was a prolific novelist who celebrated sexual pleasure and invented a language for it at a time when women writers were inhibited about dealing with the topic. Female sexuality in a male-dominated world and the joys and pains of love served as her main themes, and her novels--Cheri, La Chatte, and...
Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her death, this intellectual biography of Colette--the final volume of Julia Kristeva's trilogy "Female Geniu...
Is it possible to apply a theoretical approach to ethics? The French philosopher Catherine Chalier addresses this question with an unusual combination of traditional ethics and continental philosophy. In a powerful argument for the necessity of moral reflection, Chalier counters the notion that morality can be derived from theoretical knowledge.
Chalier analyzes the positions of two great moral philosophers, Kant and Levinas. While both are critical of an ethics founded on knowledge, their criticisms spring from distinctly different points of view. Chalier reexamines their conclusions,...
Is it possible to apply a theoretical approach to ethics? The French philosopher Catherine Chalier addresses this question with an unusual combination...
Jean-Loup Amselle explores the issue of multiculturalism by delving into the history of France's confrontation with ethnic difference. Amselle analyzes France's relationship to Egypt, Algeria, and Senegal to show how ideas about difference and assimilation played out in French colonial policies and how these same tensions continue to be problematic as France grapples with cultural pluralism.Amselle's book has timely and wide-ranging implications. Arguing against the "liberal communitarian state" as it exists in the United States, Amselle contends that an overemphasis on difference can lead to...
Jean-Loup Amselle explores the issue of multiculturalism by delving into the history of France's confrontation with ethnic difference. Amselle analyze...
Jean-Loup Amselle explores the issue of multiculturalism by delving into the history of France's confrontation with ethnic difference. Amselle analyzes France's relationship to Egypt, Algeria, and Senegal to show how ideas about difference and assimilation played out in French colonial policies and how these same tensions continue to be problematic as France grapples with cultural pluralism.Amselle's book has timely and wide-ranging implications. Arguing against the "liberal communitarian state" as it exists in the United States, Amselle contends that an overemphasis on difference can lead to...
Jean-Loup Amselle explores the issue of multiculturalism by delving into the history of France's confrontation with ethnic difference. Amselle analyze...
This work on the history of French Jewry, follows the reshaping of Franco-Jewish identity from legal emancipation after the French Revolution, through to the creation in 1860 of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the first international Jewish organization devoted to the struggle for Jewish rights throughout the world.
This work on the history of French Jewry, follows the reshaping of Franco-Jewish identity from legal emancipation after the French Revolution, through...
This book examines the development of France's male and female homosexual communities and its gay liberation movements after 1968. The book focuses on the construction of social institutions, treating gay activist organizations and their relation to post-1968 French feminism, gay ghettos in French cities, the gay press, the impact of AIDS on political identity, and the renewed militancy of the 1990s. While acknowledging the influence of America's gay liberation movement on the French situation, the author emphasizes the differences arising from the fact that homosexuality has not historically...
This book examines the development of France's male and female homosexual communities and its gay liberation movements after 1968. The book focuses on...
At once a historical essay and a self-conscious meditation on the writing of history, The Foundation of Rome takes as its starting point a series of accounts of Rome's origins offered over the course of centuries. Alexandre Grandazzi places these accounts in their contemporary contexts and shows how the growing sophistication in methodology gradually changed the accepted views of the city's origins. He looks, for example, at the hypercritical philology of the nineteenth century which cast aside everything that could not be verified. He then explains how the increase in archaeological...
At once a historical essay and a self-conscious meditation on the writing of history, The Foundation of Rome takes as its starting point a series of a...
The ancient Greek statesman is a familiar figure in the Western political tradition. Less well known is the administrator who ran the state but who was himself a slave. Challenging the modern belief that democracy and bondage are incompatible, Paulin Ismard directs our attention to the cradle of Western democracy, ancient Athens, where the functioning of civic government depended crucially on highly skilled experts who were literally public servants--slaves owned by the city-state rather than by private citizens.
Known as dēmosioi, these public slaves filled a...
The ancient Greek statesman is a familiar figure in the Western political tradition. Less well known is the administrator who ran the state but who...
The last of Cyrus the Great's dynastic inheritors and the legendary enemy of Alexander the Great, Darius III ruled over a Persian Empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indus River. Yet, despite being the most powerful king of his time, Darius remains an obscure figure.
As Pierre Briant explains in the first book ever devoted to the historical memory of Darius III, the little that is known of him comes primarily from Greek and Roman sources, which often present him in an unflattering light, as a decadent Oriental who lacked the masculine virtues of his Western...
The last of Cyrus the Great's dynastic inheritors and the legendary enemy of Alexander the Great, Darius III ruled over a Persian Empire that stret...