Podcast
New Books in French Studies
Hosted by Marshall Poe · EN
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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55episodes
Episodes
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Udo Hock, "The Mysterious Messages of the Other: On the Work of Jean Laplanches" (Psychosozial-Verlag, 2024)
Jan 26, 202501:12:24Tap to summarizeUdo Hock's Die rätselhaften Botschaften des Anderen. Zum Werk Jean Laplanches (The enigmatic messages of the other. On the work of Jean Laplanche), came out in 2024 with Psychosozial-Verlag, and collectes nine essays that Hock published over the past twenty years. Published in 2024 to celebrate Laplanche's centennial, these papers are a crucial contribution to Laplanche studies from one of its key actors. Hock is not only a reader and commentator of Laplanche, but also an editor and translator of many of Laplanche's German-language translations. Hock has a real eye for the complexities of Laplanche's work, and he thinks Laplanche together with other thinkers such as Žižek or figures of French Theory. Hock is steeped in French Theory and its milieu, of which he himself has been a member for the past forty years. He proposes to psychoanalysis a shift away from its monothematic anglophilia toward an appreciation of the French schools.I recommend reading closely these essays to anyone capable of reading German. They open up another Laplanche, the Laplanche of linguistic sublety and conceptual ingenuity. All the while Hock offers critical re-examinations of central psychoanalytic notions through his engagment with Laplanchian concepts such as seduction, mytho-symbolism or the message.The interview itself has a wonderfully explorative and open-ended quality. Hock really embarked on a journey of thinking, when he spoke of Laplanche, Lacan, Klein, and other other ideas central Laplanche's work. i greatly enjoyed this interview for its meditative quality, for the fact that Hock dwelled on topics, excavating what lies beneath the surface.Interview conducted by Myriam Sauer (in person, so at times the voices may become a bit silent) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies
Transcribe →Hélène Tessier, "Laplanche's Vocabulary" (PUF, 2024)
Jan 24, 202501:27:53Tap to summarizeIn Vocabulaire de Laplanche (PUF, 2024), edited by the renowned scholar and analyst, Hélène Tessier, several of the key readers of Jean Laplanche's work propose what is nothing short of a revelation for Laplanche studies. Theirs is a vocabulary that provides a concise and accessible dictionary of key Laplanchian terms, inviting readers of Laplanche's work to engage with the French psychoanalyst's work.In a wide-ranging conversation, professor Tessier delves into Laplanche's work, highlighting the importance of linking/dellinking to his thinking, establishing connections with sublimation and questions of culture and the drives. Tessier embarks on a real tour de force, reconstructing Laplanche's work with the utmost of passion. It was a wonderful conversation that has me ever convinced in stating that this book is a must-have for any Francophone psychoanalyst or scholar of psychonalysis.Interview conducted by Myriam Sauer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies
Transcribe →The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe
Jan 23, 202501:09:25Tap to summarizeHenry Christophe was born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, and fought to overthrow the British in North America before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue—as Haiti was then called—to end slavery. He rose to power and became their king. In his time, he was popular and famous the world over. So how did he become an enigma?In The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, Dr. Marlene L. Daut reclaims the life story of this controversial revolutionary and only king of Haiti, drawing from a trove of previously overlooked sources to paint a captivating history of his life and the awe-inspiring kingdom he built. Peeling back the layers of myth and misconception reveals a man driven by both noble ideals and profound flaws, as unforgettable as he is enigmatic. More than just a biography, The First and Last King of Haiti is an exploration of power, ambition, and the human spirit. From his pivotal role in the Haitian Revolution to his coronation as king and eventual demise, this book is testament to the enduring allure of those who dare to defy the odds and shape the course of nations. The First and Last King of Haiti is a story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval. Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon’s forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, euniteng with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe—after nine years of his rule as King Henry I—shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated? How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti’s first ruler, Dessalines? What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President Pétion in the south?The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.Our guest is: Dr. Marlene Daut, who is Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University. Her books include Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism; Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865; Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution; and The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe. She is co-editor of the Haitian Revolutionary Fictions: An Anthology, and her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation, Essence Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, The Conversation, New Literary History, Nineteenth-Century Literature, and Comparative Literature, among others. She is the co-creator and co-editor of H-Net Commons’ digital platform, H-Haiti.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast.Listeners might also enjoy: We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance Never Caught, with Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar Selling Anti-Slavery Running From Bondage Leading from the Margins Shoutin in the Fire Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies
Transcribe →Catherine Tatiana Dunlop, "The Mistral: A Windswept History of Modern France" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Jan 17, 202500:50:40Tap to summarizeEvery year, the chilly mistral wind blows through the Rhône valley of southern France, across the Camargue wetlands, and into the Mediterranean Sea. Most forceful when winter turns to spring, the wind knocks over trees, sweeps trains off their tracks, and destroys crops. Yet the mistral turns the sky clear and blue, as it often appears in depictions of Provence. The legendary wind is central to the area’s regional identity and has inspired artists and writers near and far for centuries.This force of nature is the focus of Dr. Catherine Dunlop’s The Mistral: A Windswept History of Modern France (University of Chicago Press, 2024), a wonderfully written examination of the power of the mistral wind, and in particular, the ways it challenged central tenets of nineteenth-century European society: order, mastery, and predictability. As Dunlop shows, while the modernizing state sought liberation from environmental realities through scientific advances, land modification, and other technological solutions, the wind blew on, literally crushing attempts at control, and becoming increasingly integral to regional feelings of place and community.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies
Transcribe →Emily Marker, "Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Jan 5, 202501:08:37Tap to summarizeThinking together the histories of European integration and African decolonization, Emily Marker's Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era (Cornell University Press, 2022) is a pathbreaking study of how the two continents continued to make one another's histories in the years after the Second World War. Tracking the ways that young people and education figured in plans for the future of both the French empire and of an integrated Europe, the book pursues archival traces and arguments that illuminate continuing debates about race, religion, inclusion, national, and transnational identities.Pursuing policies and programs aimed at French imperial reform and renewal alongside attempts to inculcate a sense of Europeanness in a new generation of transnational citizens, Marker's chapters examine the contours of a postwar vision of a united Europe understood as at once "colorblind" and white, secular and Christian. When African students made claims for greater equality, they faced a "postwar racial common sense" that pointed up the limits of French and African solidarity in an era of decolonization. Drawing on an impressive body of research, Black France, White Europe will be of tremendous interest to scholars of France, Africa, and Europe. The book is a compelling history of the present that connects contemporary debates about race, religion, and belonging to a longer durée of national, transnational, imperial, and postcolonial worldmaking. I hope listeners will enjoy our conversation as much as I did! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies
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