Intellectual and cultural history

Hodges- Nadia Yassine’s Intellectual Anti-Intellectualism on Darwin

by Blair Hodges

Charlatans Chicanery

by Mohamed Eno

Thr poem is an excerpt from my forthcoming volume Guilt of Otherness

The volume is under review with a subject area expert and a literary critic. The volume is under review with a subject area expert and a literary critic.

A. Wiedemann, Lettere d'oltreoceano: William Suida e Genova nel dopoguerra. A proposito di alcune lettere a Mario Labò, in: M. Migliorini (a cura di), Rapporti epistolari per la storia dell'arte. Lettere sparse del XIX e del XX secolo, GB Editoria, Roma 201

by Antonie Rita Wiedemann

"Quick, accessible to everyone and delightful": History and Art History in Popular Italian Magazines of the 1960s

by Antonie Rita Wiedemann

published in: Barba Korte/ Sylvia Palatschek (eds.), Popular History now and then. International Perspectives (History in Popular Cultures vol. 6), Transcript, Bielefeld, 2012, pp. 185-201.

Intellectuals and society: sociological and historical perspectives.

by Patrick Baert

By Patrick Baert and Joel Issac.

In: Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory. Eds. G.Delanty and S.P. Turner. London: Routledge, pp. 200-211.

This chapter critically assesses the various sociological and historical contributions to the study of... more This chapter critically assesses the various sociological and historical contributions to the study of intellectuals.It also explores the affinities betwen the sociological and historical studies in this area.

Settecento frugale : intorno al vegetarianismo di Benjamin Franklin

by Mannucci Erica

in A. Giuffrida, F. D'Avenia, D. Palermo (eds), Studi storici dedicati a Orazio Cancila, 4 vols., Palermo, Quaderni - Mediterranea. Ricerche storiche, 16, 2011: vol. 3, 1147-65.

Pitagora e la rivoluzione francese: attualità politica ed eredità culturali in un viaggio immaginario nel Mediterraneo antico

by Mannucci Erica

Pythagoras and the French Revolution: Current Politics and Cultural Legacies in an Imaginary Journey in the... more Pythagoras and the French Revolution: Current Politics and Cultural Legacies in an Imaginary Journey in the Mediterranean of Ancient Times


Historiographical assumptions on French revolutionaries and Antiquity and, more generally, on their culture and legacy, seen here as diverse and plural, are challenged here through an analysis of the Voyages de Pythagore, published in 1799 by Sylvain Maréchal, an intellectual who is mostly remembered for his role in Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals. The discussion, pursued in the light of Maréchal’s entire intellectual biography, focuses on the part of the Voyages devoted to Pythagoras in Sicily (volumes IV and V). This part is a complex composition of diverse sources both ancient and modern (including travel books such as that of the Scotsman Patrick Brydone), but it is also characterized by the distinctive mark of an original author. It reveals itself a particularly productive choice for the purposes of a non-biased detection of a critical rather than rhetorical revolutionary use of less habitual references to Antiquity.

Sylvain Maréchal, le donne, una donna

by Mannucci Erica

in S. Levati, M. Meriggi (eds), Con la ragione e col cuore. Studi dedicati a Carlo Capra, Milano, Franco Angeli, 2008

Sylvain Maréchal (1750-1803), a late 18th century materialist, a revolutionary journalist and one of Gracchus Babeuf’s... more Sylvain Maréchal (1750-1803), a late 18th century materialist, a revolutionary journalist and one of Gracchus Babeuf’s companions in the Conspiracy of Equals, was a representative of a patriarchal vision that was so extreme as to appear provocative. In other words, he was radically egalitarian, but only as long as women, or their inclusion in the public sphere, were not concerned. Recent scholars have considered his late pamphlet Projet d’une loi portant défense d’apprendre à lire aux femmes (1801) as the actual symbol of revolutionary anti-feminism. One of the chief polemical replies to this pamphlet was the work of Marie-Armande Gacon-Dufour, a friend and, most importantly, an intellectual partner of Marechal’s, who was an habitual visitor at his home, where he lived with his wife and other family members. After his death, she wrote his biography in his own cabinet, to feel his presence. Here we begin to trace the exchange between Sylvain and Marie-Armande, who emerges as an intellectual in her own right and in many ways a continuator of his ideas. This relationship is contextualized both through a consideration of earlier positions Maréchal took on women’s education and emancipation before or during the Revolution, and a critical account of the historiography calling attention in the last decades to the issue of the vision of woman in the French revolutionaries or Maréchal in particular (J. Landes, L. Hunt, G. Fraisse, F. Aubert).

Opposizioni al Concordato: l'ultima fiammata del secolo dei lumi?

by Mannucci Erica

in A. De Francesco (ed), Da Brumaio ai Cento giorni. Cultura di governo e dissenso politico nell’Europa di Bonaparte, Milano, Guerini e Associati, 2007

Opposition to the Concordat: Last Flare of the Enlightenment?

There were different forms of opposition and... more Opposition to the Concordat: Last Flare of the Enlightenment?

There were different forms of opposition and resistance, both Catholic and secular, to Bonaparte’s religious policy, leading to the Concordat of 1801. In the anti-clerical field, the institutional opposition, having had an official and political expression, has been studied more than the extra-institutional opposition, which we know in the form of individual voices and written, often literary, works. This opposition, however, was not negligible, not only because it bothered Bonaparte, but because of its role in the long-lasting history of the opposition between the clerical and the anti-clerical, between catholicism and secularization in France. In this long-term perspective, linked to the reconstruction of the forms of defense and transmission of a strong culture – though held by a minority, at the time – focused on the denunciation of religious prejudice and its role in political domination, some figures are worthy of attention. Their pugnacious secular writings caused a great deal of comment not only at the time, but during the century that was then beginning. The role of a number of intellectuals is examined, some of them connected to the Portique républicain, a literary society founded just before Brumaire: S. Maréchal, E. Parny, M.-J. Chénier, A.-A. Piis, P.-A. Plancher-Valcour, C. Pigault-Lebrun.

Autobiografia di Grub Street: L'immagine di sé di Sylvain Maréchal (1750-1803)

by Mannucci Erica

published in "Società e storia", 118, 2007

Conformité et hétérodoxie chez Sylvain Maréchal

by Mannucci Erica

in M. Biard (ed), Les politiques de la Terreur, 1793-1794, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes-Société des études robespierristes, 2008

Maréchal was part of a generation which was not “born” with the Revolution: he had had a role in Parisian literary... more Maréchal was part of a generation which was not “born” with the Revolution: he had had a role in Parisian literary life since 1770, and as an author he was an atheist, an egalitarian and a republican well before the Revolution. He had assimilated a complex cultural tradition, and developed an original intellectual style, which enabled him to express in a rather direct language the anticipation of deep and imminent social and political changes. The actions and writings of this independent man in the period from 1793 to Thermidor show the ways in which a revolutionary intellectual who avoided affiliation met the rapid changes and the constraints and pressures of that period, positioning himself between conformity and heterodoxy, between critical thought and opportunistic prudence, or between different levels of communication and medias (both newspapers or the theatre, with the notorious play Jugement dernier des rois, and scholarly and political works). This constant repositioning also generated some dimensions of possibility, that is, alternative (anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist etc.) republican views, which reveal themselves as thinkable in the period that led to the Terror and at later turning points. An interdisciplinary reassessment of his intellectual production is all the more interesting because Maréchal’s contents have been typically interpreted (in the 19th and 20th centuries) according to preconceptions based on strong paradigms or evaluative preoccupations to “justify” or “condemn”, overlooking the vitality of certain ideas with deep philosophical roots, such as atheism or cosmopolitanism, as hazardously developed by a militant author in the accelerated experience of revolutionary life and of its evolving communication and publics.

"Malheur aux faibles!". Condamnations de l'oppression des animaux

by Mannucci Erica

Published in "Dix-Huitième Siècle", 28, 1996

Über jakutische Etymologien im Werk von W. Sieroszewski

by Marek Stachowski

Teoria nostratyczna i szkoła moskiewska

by Marek Stachowski

(= The Nostratic Theory and the Moscow School).

The Nostratic Theory, the main directions of its evolution and the Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics are critically presented in this study under the following headings: 1. Preliminaries; 2. Beginnings and Holger Pedersen; 3. Three binary hypotheses; 4. The Moscow School; 5. Reception in Europe; 6. Conclusion. -- The aim of the present author is not only to show the main lines of the evolution of Nostratics but also to formulate what he personally views as its most characteristic features – now and in the past – and to suggest what questions inevitably have to be answered if some kind of future cooperation of Moscow Nostraticists with non-Nostratic diachronic comparativists is to come into being and take root.

Uralistik und Turkologie - geschieden und doch verliebt

by Marek Stachowski

Heimlichkeiten, Mißverstehen, Haß. Mehr Soll als Haben: Bismarck, Wagner und die deutsche Einheit

by Hannu Salmi

Co-authored with Dieter Borchmeyer, published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12.8.1995, Nr. 186, S. B1

Richard Wagner notiert in einer seiner letzten Schriften ("Was nützt diese Erkenntnis?", 1880): "Die... more Richard Wagner notiert in einer seiner letzten Schriften ("Was nützt diese Erkenntnis?", 1880): "Die deutsche Einheit muß überall hin die Zähne weisen können, selbst wenn sie nichts damit zu kauen mehr haben sollte." Und es folgt eine erbitterte Attacke auf Bismarck, der "rastlos der Vermehrung seiner Machtmittel nachspürt" - und damit den Krieg verewige. Der von seiner Kriegsbegeisterung in den Jahren 1870/71 radikal abgerückte, zum Pazifisten gewordene Wagner hat in
seinen letzten Lebensjahren kaum jemanden so tief gehaßt wie Bismarck. Die Tagebücher Cosima Wagners verzeichnen eine ganze Reihe exzessiver Ausbrüche gegen den "Gewaltigen", der ihm geradezu zum apokalyptischen Drachen einer durch immer fürchterlichere Kriege auf ihren Untergang zutreibenden Menschheit wird. "Ich kam in die elendeste Zeit, welche Deutschland je erlebt, mit diesem Sauhetzer an der Spitze", ereifert er sich am 18. März 1880. Einen "brutalen Barbaren" nennt er Bismarck am 21. März 1881. Wagners Bismarck-Haß überträgt sich auf ganz Preußen, wenn er am 21. Januar 1881 höhnt, "daß immer die dümmsten Stämme unter den Völkern bestimmt seien, die Tatze des Stärkeren protzig auf alles zu legen" wie eben "die Preußen bei den Deutschen".

Les motifs de la décapitation dans l'art et la littérature d'Occident

by antonio dominguez leiva

La vie comme songe?: une tentation de l'Occident

by antonio dominguez leiva

Erotisme et ordre moral

by antonio dominguez leiva

Les motifs de la décapitation dans l'art et la littérature d'Occident: du legs médiéval à la post-modernité:(une archéologie du supplice et du macabre), 1450 …

by antonio dominguez leiva