Books & ideas

Left behind by personal autonomy

Romain Philit — 2026-09-10T07:40:16Z

What are the emancipatory prospects for women excluded from salaried work? By analyzing working-class Maghrebin women's attitudes towards work, family, and heterosexuality, Fatma Çingi Kocadost shows the limits of individual emancipation through work.

One is not born, but becomes Black

Pascale Barthélémy — 2026-09-08T06:43:24Z

Black women—whether from the Caribbean, Africa, or of African descent—have conceptualized and embodied French citizenship. Their often hidden trajectories and struggles illustrate an alternative history of the nation, shaped by colonialism, when seen through the lenses of race, class, and gender.

Power's retreat

Emeline Durand — 2026-09-03T08:11:00Z

How does justice vanquish force? Simone Weil's thought unifies politics and religion while proposing a radical conception of power, understood not as domination but as retreat, in a world in which violence gives way to obedience.

Gendering Philosophy

Johanna Lenne-Cornuez — 2026-09-01T07:58:38Z

Can one philosophize as a feminist when the history of philosophy is so gendered? Yes—but this requires paying close attention to the positions that traverse and often constitute it.

The origins of “habitus”

Paul Bernard-Nouraud — 2026-07-14T11:31:00Z

Étienne Anheim and Paul Pasquali examine a key moment in interdisciplinary dialogue: Pierre Bourdieu's translation and editing of the art historian Erwin Panofsky.

Moderating power

Johanna Lenne-Cornuez — 2026-07-08T12:16:58Z

Bernard Manin sees Montesquieu as a political philosopher who was attentive to the plurality of political forms and the way that such pluralism can, in moderate regimes, prevent the abuse of power. This is why it is important, he explains, to keep reading this Enlightenment philosopher.

Peace, prosperity, petroleum

Louis Fagon — 2026-06-23T07:04:14Z

The intensive use of carbon energies has brought prosperity, particularly since 1945, along with relatively peaceful international relations. Decarbonation makes it necessary, according to Pierre Charbonnier, to invent a new form of geopolitics.

Argentina's complex origins

Gonzague Espinosa-Dassonneville — 2026-06-11T16:11:59Z

Could Argentina, instead of being the modern country we know, have developed into fourteen independent states engaged in never-ending competition? From the “disunited province” of Rio de la Plata to the affirmation of a single nation-state, a new book describes a quest for unity that lasted five decades.

A total history of the Saint-Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Alexandre Goderniaux — 2026-06-09T07:20:00Z

Thirty years after La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy (Saint Bartholomew's Night), Denis Crouzet revisits the massacres of August 1572—a collective purge, a royal enigma, and a popular initiative, which his new book illuminates with bold erudition by reintroducing confessional violence, with all its historical depth, into the story.

The Origin of Byzantine Studies

Mathieu Couderc — 2026-06-02T08:12:22Z

It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that Byzantine studies acquired their official scientific and academic status, after a long process involving rigorous selection of the documents that have survived to the present day.