Books & ideas

Social Nietzscheanism

Arnaud Sorosina — 2026-01-06T08:57:00Z

Can Nietzsche be considered a social thinker? Straddling social critique and critique of the social, French and German interpretive traditions that embrace Nietzsche make it necessary to revise the hasty conclusions of Marxists and anti-postmodernists.

Habermas in the public sphere

Clotilde Nouët — 2019-02-28T07:00:00Z

In this intellectual portrait of the enfant terrible of the Frankfurt School, S. Müller-Doohm presents us with an indefatigable polemicist whose various stands have marked the last fifty years. This first ever biography of Habermas also takes us through post-war German history.

The Suspension of Meaning

Sarah Al-Matary — 2013-01-28T08:40:10Z

Creating connections has been the aim of Jean Starobinski's work for more than half a century. His body of work is large and shifting, created in response to life, lying somewhere between the critical and the clinical. Books & Ideas met this citizen of the world at his house in Geneva, following the recent publication of three important books.

The Empirical Sociology of Critique

Nicolas Duvoux — 2012-02-14T20:33:08Z

Sociologist Luc Boltanski situates his most recent publications and their main concepts within his broader intellectual trajectory, examining critical sociology and the sociology of critique, and what they can tell us about today's social situation.

What Remains of Dance

Bernard Sève — 2010-02-11T13:02:27Z

The various dance notation systems invented over the years have never succeeded in becoming part of choregraphic practices. Works are almost completely absorbed by the performance and are only handed down by tradition, more gesturally than orally. In dance, the very notion of a work is therefore problematic. This acknowledgement forms the basis of Frédéric Pouillaude's excellent aesthetic analysis.

The art market before the French Revolution

Colin Jones — 2009-04-08T10:16:06Z

Charlotte Guichard highlights the role of the amateur d'art in the XVIIIth century art market. Although he played a key role in the rise of French art in the last half century of the Ancien Régime, the amateur was strongly criticized for his aristocratic notion of artistic taste.

The Politics of the Veil

Cécile Laborde — 2008-01-30T12:18:06Z

The Politics of the Veil is an exemplary exercise in the critique of discourse, unearthing its intentional and subconscious meaning, and bringing to the surface its internal tensions and paradoxes; but the counter-discourse of toleration and recognition may turn out to be as problematic as the republican discourse of abstraction, denial and repression so eloquently criticised.