2013
FOREIGN RIGHTS
Catalogue
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new series
laviedesidees.fr/Puf new series
Internet site and place of intellectual debate, laviedesidees.fr has teamed up with Puf, whose catalogue represents all the currents and all the facets of French and international thinking and culture. Together, they will publish books that fulfil the vocations of a scholarly collective and a publishing house that has always perpetrated a tradition of excellence. laviedesidees.fr (Englishlanguage site: booksandideas.net) is more than an on-line journal: it is an intellectual cooperative, a workshop fostering knowledge and debate in the domains of political and social sciences for a wide public.
Circulating knowledge Created in 2007, linked to the Collège de France and directed by Pierre Rosanvallon, it publishes essays, articles, interviews and book reviews providing reliable information about current intellectual life in France and abroad. Having made a firm resolution of pluri- and trans-disciplinarity, we aim to ensure that knowledge circulates beyond its domain of production. By approaching research themes, societal debates and current issues transversally, by combining the intelligence of sociology, economy, history, philosophy, law and aesthetics, we produce comprehensive studies of the key challenges of our times.
Breaking down barriers This association between laviedesidees.fr and Puf will also be the ideal opportunity to experiment new links between digital technology and print. By combining traditional and on-line publishing, this series aims to renew the channels of intellectual life, so promoting the mutual vocations of laviedesidees.fr and Puf: to think today’s world, to break down barriers between disciplines and encourage internationalization, and above all, to democratize learning.
new series
The Future of Solidarity
Robert Castel Nicolas Duvoux
New Perspectives on the Holocaust
Ivan Jablonka Annette Wieviorka
112 pages • 8,50 €
128 pages • 8,50 €
January 2013
February 2013
Spanish rights sold
Post-racial America?
In Favour of World History
128 pages • 8,50 €
Patrick Boucheron Nicolas Delalande
What’s the Purpose of Elections?
March 2013
104 pages • 8,50 € April 2013
Pauline Peretz
Justifying Social Order
China in Movements
96 pages • 8,50 €
96 pages • 8,50 €
104 pages • 8,50 €
September 2013
September 2013
October 2013
Jon Elster Arnaud Le Pillouer
Christophe Jaffrelot Émilie Frenkiel Jules Naudet Jean-Louis Rocca
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Philosophy
Sustainable development is not only a technical concept, seeking ingenious solutions to guarantee the well-being of future generations and ensure a fairer distribution of global wealth. It is a philosophical question posed by societies who have lost faith in their own history and are no longer able to project themselves into a dream of neverending progress. In this arena, self-interest, passion and power balance grapple with debates about principles and values. This book explores the justifications and philosophical implications of sustainable development. By recalling the origins of the concept and examining the tensions resulting from its
implementation, it exposes, in concrete terms, the economic, political and moral stakes as well as the existential implications. Why is our faith in the virtues of development still so strong? What is our perception of justice and ways of living a happy life?
PhD, Frank Burbage teaches the literary and scientific prep classes at the Lycée Fénelon in Paris. He is also a member of the editorial committee of the ‘Cahiers philosophiques’ and co-director of the Université populaire du dix-huitième arrondissement de Paris (www.up18.org).
The Philosophy of Sustainable Development Frank Burbage
160 pages • 14 € April 2013
The Structures of the Mind, Lévi Strauss and Myths Gildas Salmon
314 pages • 28 € January 2013
What does it mean to compare two societies, two institutions or two myths? Taking this question as a starting point, we can understand the work of Lévi-Strauss. Instead of itemizing the similarities between cultures, he chooses to make their differences the driving force of his comparison. This approach, which finds its conclusion in the Mythologiques, is indissociable from a thesis on the production of cultural phenomena: each society forges its myths and its rites by translating and distorting those of its neighbours. Consequently, comparison cannot be reduced to the classification of societal facts; it becomes a means of grasping how the human mind functions at points where cultures meet, of elucidating those mental operations by which they construct their differences. This redeployment of anthropological knowledge is operated in the study of myths.
In order to elucidate the challenge, this book retraces a conceptual history that takes in Tyler, Garnet, Dumez, but also Freud, Saussure and Jacobson. It leads to a reinterpretation of the notion of structure: far from confining social existence in irrevocable models – as critics often claim – it provides the means of describing the dynamics of transformation that lead each culture to display a distinct identity.
PhD, agrégé, Gildas Salmon is a researcher with the CNRS (GSPM - Institut Marcel Mauss). His work focuses on the history of the epistemology of social sciences (especially anthropology), and the philosophy of the mind. He is now working on a history of comparatism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
©DR
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Philosophy
What reasons have been given to disqualify it or claim to have answered it already? The second part studies in depth some new answers and possibles, forcing other problems to the surface: the plausibility of theist and naturalist answers, the possibility of thinking nothingness, the impossibility of an empty world, the limits of the principle of sufficient reason.
Francis Wolff is a Professor of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure. He has written several books about ancient and general philosophy, notably Dire le monde (Puf, 2004) and Notre humanité. D’Aristote aux neurosciences (Fayard, 2010).
©DR
In spite of proclamations that ‘metaphysics is dead’, philosophy can no more avoid metaphysical questions today than it could in the past. Were philosophers to abandon questions that reach beyond experience, they would give free rein to all sorts of irrational speculations, spiritual charlatans and visionary peddlers of illusion. The question ‘Why something rather than nothing?’ seems to sum up some of the virtues and all the sins attributed to metaphysics. Incontestably unanswerable, it reveals how outmoded - even inept - is this branch of philosophy. Obviously radical, it highlights its inevitable, necessary, indeed ultimate aspects. It is a tangle of difficulties and concepts whose possible solutions have not been exhausted by classic doctrines, but are still the object of fertile discussion. The first part of this book treats the question itself: is it unique or multiple? Does it have meaning or not?
Why Something Rather Than Nothing? Francis Wolff (ed.) 232 pages • 20 € May 2013
Philosophy in 100 Words Frédéric Worms (ed.) 128 pages • 9 € March 2013
All words in a language are philosophical; especially those that describe the most common experiences – life, death, love and hatred, justice, being, etc. Starting out from these terms, philosophers think reality. Sometimes, they divide reality into sections to make their thoughts clearer, or invent neologisms and conceptual creations, some of which have become familiar while remaining little understood, such as Descartes’ cogito or Spinoza’s conatus. But philosophy is also a rigorous discipline, one which employs technical terms – ethics, metaphysics, causality, empiricism, interpretation, and many more. These terms are its tools; they mark out its territories. This book
in the ‘Que sais-je?’ series brings us 100 words selected by 11 philosophers to provide an ‘introduction to philosophy’. A succession of texts explains the purpose of philosophy, its basic notions, its production and its issues. The author also permits readers to participate in some of the discussions that inspire philosophers.
Frédéric Worms is director of the Centre international d’étude de la philosophie française contemporaine and Professor at University of Lille III.
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Philosophy
The book opens with a study of the history of philosophy: perception as an instrument of learning in Antiquity and the ethical, practical and soteriological concerns linked to it. Then the problems posed during the Classic period (from Descartes to the empiricists and Kant) when learning was conceived fundamentally as an operation; and lastly, the modern theories, which strive to define perception in itself as an activity, practiced by philosophers (who seek the unity and totality of the subject), by psychophysiologists, and by Gestalt psychologists (who see the relation between the parts and the whole as being primitive). The author goes on to present knowledge and problems as they appear in contemporary research and studies, situating perception firstly in the context of basic biological
data, such as the function of the organism – not the most primitive, as it happens, because motor functions precede sensoriality; there exists a formation of the perceptive function beginning with motricity and imagination (function and effect).
In 1980, at the close of the most intensely political period in his work and in his life, Louis Althusser decided to write a philosophy textbook that would be accessible to all readers, even those without any previous preparation. Initiation à la philosophie pour les non-philosophes is the result. Far from being simply an introduction in the popular science style, it is in fact an authentic concentration of the most fundamental theses of Althusser’s own ideas. Among many other factors, nowhere else does he push the distinction between philosophy and other disciplines so far; or develop in such detail the concept of ‘practice’. However, among the many vital contributions made by Althusser during the French ‘moment philosophique’ of the 60s, this concept was perhaps the most successful,
and caused the greatest number of misunderstandings. Presenting a synthesis of Althusser’s work, this book provides a snapshot of one of the most influential philosophies of the second half of the 20th century and a manifesto for ideas to come – whose success with Althusser’s disciples (from Rancière to Badiou, from Zizek to Balibar) demonstrates their contemporaneity and urgency. Texts edited by Michael Goshgarian and introduced by Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc.
Graduate of the École Normale, Professor agrégé of philosophy at the Lycée in Tours (1948), then of Psychology at the University of Poitiers (1955), the Sorbonne (1963) and Paris Descartes University (after 1968), Gilbert Simondon is the author of two renowned theses which he defended in 1958: Du Mode d’existence des objets techniques and L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information.
Lessons on Perception (1964-1965)
Gilbert Simondon- Prefaced by Renaud Barbaras 448 pages • 29 € • ISBN : 978-2-13-062529-2 October 2013
Initiation to Philosophy for Non-Philosophers Louis Althusser January 2014
Louis Althusser was a key figure in French philosophy during the second half of the 20th century. Among his most famous works: Montesquieu, politics et l’histoire (Puf, 2003), Lire Le Capital (Puf, 2008), Sur la reproduction (Puf, 2011).
Philosophy
design plays a key role in our capacity to make the world habitable, i.e. to create being.
What exactly has been revolutionized by the digital revolution? From the historical viewpoint, it is a new technical revolution that consists of the advent of a ‘digital technical system’. But from the human viewpoint, it is above all a philosophical revolution that profoundly modifies our structures of perception. The digital revolution is a new and ‘ontophanic’ one, i.e. an alteration of the process by which the being (ontos) appears to us (phaino) and, consequently, an adjustment of our very idea of reality. Digital devices modify the phenomenological quality of our being in the world and teach us to perceive anew. That is why the so-called difference between the real and the virtual does not, and never has, existed. We are living in a ‘digital ontophany’, i.e. an environment of digitally focused phenomenality that is deeply hybrid, both digital and non-digital, on-line and off-line, forming a single continuous substance. Hence digital
Beings and Screens
Having received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Paris Descartes University, Stéphane Vial is an Associate Professor of Design at the University of Nîmes (France) and a researcher at the ACTE Institute (Sorbonne Paris 1 University). Previously, he was a Professor of Philosophy at the École Boulle, a famous Paris-based school of art and design. His research is focused on Technology, Digital Age and Design and has been presented in several international conferences, in New York, Lisbon and Tokyo. His new book, Beings and Screens: How Technology Changes the Way We Perceive will be published by Presses Universitaires de France in September, 2013. He is also the author of Short Treatise on Design (Puf, 2010), translated into Swedish, Korean and Chinese. Official website : www. stephane-vial.net
How Technology Changes the Way We Perceive Stéphane Vial 260 pages • 22 € September 2013
Pascal Chabot
152 pages • 15 € January 2013 Italian rights sold
Burn-out is the pathology of the 21st century, as was melancholy in the 19th, and paranoia or schizophrenia in the 20th. But what exactly do we mean by a sickness on the scale of a civilisation? In Global Burn-Out, Pascal Chabot answers that question by exploring the reasons why so many men and women today are thrust into professional despair. He evokes a postmodern setting torn asunder by the contradictory demands - for performance and motivation, perfection and balance, recognition and subjection - conveyed by a crushing system concerned only by moneymaking. Yet, although his indictment of those responsible for the contemporary situation in the workplace is implacable, Pascal Chabot points to a more hopeful horizon of change that could be induced by a new pact of civilisation, one that
would resolve the imbalance so specific to today’s working world – drained of its energy – by inventing a new equilibrium and restoring to work its forgotten truth. A great text of combat and hope.
©Remy Russotto
Global Burn-Out
Pascal CHABOT is a philosopher. A teacher at the IHECS (Brussels), he is the author of The Philosophy of Simondon: Between Technology and Individuation (Vrin, 2003, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), Après le progrès (Puf, 2008) and Les sept stades de la philosophie (Puf, 2011). He edited the multiauthor works Simondon (Vrin, 2002), Les philosophes et la technique (Vrin, 2003, with Gilbert Hottois), and Territoires intimes. Michèle Noiret, la danse-cinéma (Alternatives Théâtrales, 2011, with Sergine Laloux). With François Lagarde, he produced the film Simondon du désert (2012).
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Philosophy
550 articles in an exhaustive inventory propose a critical examination of explanatory models of racism; drawing on sociology, social anthropology, social psychology, history, political philosophy...
A Historical and Critical Dictionary of Racism
This dictionary casts a historical and conceptual light on all the debates and controversies that enter into the phenomenon of racism – from everyday stigmatization (insults) to organized massacres – hence the choice to take into account the demarcations of the phenomenon (intolerance, ethnocentrism, xenophobia) as well as its hard core (doctrinal constructions and biological concepts). There is also a comparative approach (‘Exclusion’, ‘Colour’, ‘Crime against humanity’, ‘Genocide’, ‘Ethnic cleansing’...), analyses of social interaction (anti-Black, anti-White, anti-immigrant...), and entries such as ‘authoritative personality’, ‘collective identity’, ‘conspiracy theories’, ‘multiculturalism’... which open up another path of reflection.
This Dictionary of Racism is equally a Dictionary of Antiracism: the various traditions emanating from Abolitionism, Anti-colonialism, Anti-imperialism, Anti-nationalism and Anti-fascism are analysed in numerous articles. A multi-author book covering racism in all its manifestations, this dictionary is a reasoned and critical response to the anxiety and fear inspired by globalization and its mixophobia. It also helps us understand what ‘new racism’ – racism without races or any claims of inequality – can mean. A new challenge for humanity.
Pierre-André Taguieff is research director at the CNRS (CEVIPOF, Centre de Recherches politiques de Sciences Po).
Pierre-André Taguieff 2016 pages • 49 € May 2013
Politics and the State The work of Deleuze and Guattari on classic or contemporary issues of political thinking rein the Work of Deleuze and Guattari mains relatively little known. This book presents Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc
248 pages • 25 € January 2013 English rights sold
the formation of a political philosophy rooted in the theoretical, economic and political transformations of its times. It is constructed around three poles: State-form and sovereign violence; war and its contemporary mutations; capitalism as a system of global domination. These major axes are situated at the heart of contemporary debate on extreme or ‘impolitical‘ violence (E. Balibar), on the contradictory geographies of
capital (D. Harvey), on the struggle of minorities, and the controversial reappropriations of the work of Carl Schmitt.
Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc is an associate professor of contemporary philosophy at the University of Toulouse II. Member of the journal Actuel Marx, he published Philosophy politique XIXe-XXe siècles (Puf, 2009); Deleuze et l’Anti-Oedipe. La production du désir (Puf, 2011), and recently, Deleuze et la violence (EuroPhilosophy, 2012).
Sociology
Conspiracy myths are constant factors in human imagination, firstly because they do great service to our need to understand the world. These myths are founded on a ‘revelation’ effect which is extremely satisfying to the mind, a feeling close to what we experience when we solve an enigma: that of giving coherence to facts that appeared not to possess any, and of finding a binding agent between seemingly independent events by showing that they are linked - surreptitiously - by the will of a group or an individual. With lots of examples drawn from game theory, neurosciences and the most elucidating and disturbing case studies, Bronner identifies at least three causes: the first, which we must learn to control, is the way in which our minds work; the second, which we must analyse, is how our democracy functions; and the third, which the author aspires to
regulate or even monitor: the ‘cognitive market’ born of the dazzling development of information technologies. To those who claim the right to doubt, Bronner replies that this right goes hand in hand with ‘duties’ that are too rarely taught in our schools.
How is scientific knowledge constituted? Are there social and cultural factors that favour the development of science? Which institutions encourage or hinder that development? How do scholars work? How do they validate their findings? Why do controversies arise? Exploring the relations between science and society, sociologists of science studied the way in which scientific knowledge is edified. Far from the fascinating and slightly worrying figure of the lone scientist in his lab, they show research in hard
science today as essentially a collective practice, often transnational.
Gérald Bronner is Professor of Sociology at Paris-Diderot University and member of the Institut universitaire de France. His books include L’Empire des croyances (Puf, 2003), which received an award from the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, and La Pensée extrême (Denoël, 2009), winner of the European Amalfi prize for Social Sciences.
Democracy of the Gullible Gérald Bronner 360 pages • 19 € March 2013
Yves Gingras 128 pages • 9 € February 2013
Yves Gingras is a Professor in the History Department of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), Canada Research Chair in the History and Sociology of Science, and Scientific Director of the Observatory of Science and Technology (OST).
©DR
Sociology of Science
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Sociology
In this book, Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon, Arlette Farge, Frédéric Lordon, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Frédéric Lebaron and Édouard Louis show how Pierre Bourdieu’s thoughts continue to serve as a critical device applied to reality and inequality today.
arena, the authors, in their potent and striking texts (they recall the ‘emotional context’ in which Bourdieu claimed to write his books) use thinking as a tool box and a weapon, giving them the power to reveal and undo social injustice.
The selected texts do not make up a commentary of Pierre Bourdieu’s work; they show what Bourdieu made thinkable, well beyond sociology, in all domains of creativity: literature, art, philosophy, history, politics, etc. Refusing to draw a line between intellectual work and involvement in the political
Edouard Louis’ work at the École Normale Supérieure focuses on social science and philosophy.
Pierre Bourdieu. The Legacy of Rebellion Edouard Louis (ed.) 192 pages • 18 € March 2013 Spanish rights sold
What Does ‘Digital’ Mean? Milad Doueihi 64 pages • 7 € October 2013
How can we understand and define digital technology, the phenomenon that seems to be transforming our lives and rearranging our reality? Dictionaries are less than clear about the word in their definitions, often providing the etymological and technical aspects: a sector associated with calculation, numbers, stressing above all the opposition with analogue. In our usage, however, digital refers to other things. Its problematic raises a specific and totally new difficulty which is inherent to digital technology in its deployment today. But it is an enlightening difficulty; one that permits us to grasp its complexity. Hence the difficulty is epistemological, institutional and social, even economic and political, affecting all the private and public sectors.
Although every aspect of our lives is altered and we are obliged to rethink our values, this is only one symptom of the global mutation brought about by digital technology.
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Milad Doueihi holds the Chair of Digital Research and Cultures at Laval University (Quebec) and is a prolific author: Une histoire perverse du cœur humain, Le paradis terrestre. Mythes et philosophies. Solitude de l’incomparable. Augustin et Spinoza, La grande conversion numérique, suivie de Rêveries d’un promeneur numérique (2007, 2011), Pour un humanisme numérique (2011), L’Homme et l’Oiseau. La Fauconnerie (2014). L’imaginaire de l’intelligence forthcoming at the beginning of 2014.
Sociology
As from September 2012, Puf will be publishing a critical edition of Marcel Mauss, edited by Florence Weber. For the first time, the nine volumes in the series will afford understanding of the genesis of Mauss’ œuvre, and reveal all its unity and modernity. Disciple and nephew of Durkheim, Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) is the unchallenged founder of French anthropology. His writing is a testimony to man’s unity and the multiplicity of culture; the anthropology of the single and the multiple.
His major essays all demonstrate a double dimension: an extreme concern for specificity and a theoretical effort to grasp human universality. Hence he avoids dogmatism: always giving precedence to ethnographical description, historical archives and linguistic aspects over theory, without abandoning the effort of conceptualisation that aims to understand sacrifice, magic, prayer, giving, body techniques and the notion of the person.
Primitive Classifications
Prayer
Revised introduction by R. Needham Prefaced by Éric Brian
Introduction by W.S.F. Pickering Postface by Florence Weber
Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss 112 pages • 8,50 € January 2014
Saint-Bessus Study of an Alpine Cult followed by Contribution to a Study of the Collective Representation of Death and The Preeminence of the Right Hand
Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss September 2014
Sociology and Psychology Marcel Mauss
Edited by Julien Clément and Florence Weber September 2014
Robert Hertz
Techniques, Technology and Civilisation
January 2014
Edited and presented by Nathan Schlanger
Introduction by Nicolas Mariot
Marcel Mauss
504 pages • 15 € • September 2012
The Outline of a General Theory of Magic
Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss Introduction by Florence Weber March 2014
Essay on the Nature and the Function of Sacrifice
Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss Introduction by Florence Weber
The Gift
Marcel Mauss
Introduction by Florence Weber 264 pages • 10,50 € • September 2012 Spanish, Chinese simplified and Vietnamese rights sold
The Nation
Marcel Mauss
Introduction by Marcel Fournier
March 2014
408 pages • 16,50 €
Portuguese rights sold
April 2013
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Sociology
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Georges Balandier is, in more than one respect, a great witness of our times and a remarkable conveyor of knowledge, as this book proves. Firstly recounting his unique itinerary, opening onto a broad panorama of sociological thinking, it then takes root in a selection of press contributions published throughout the last decade of the 20th century. We follow his highly original path, shaped by authors whose works, commented here, have accompanied – even engendered – the evolution of social science, providing so many solutions to the challenges of The Great Transformation taking place today. Like an intellectual ‘Big Bang’, the succession of confrontations and upheavals that have affected all societies, all civilisations and the balance of power between nations, flows from Georges Balandier’s pen, releasing a new space of communication for a science that is still young, shaped by incessant turbulence since its creation and today put to the test of delivering meaning and means of action, in spite of an uncertain future. Hence this book is a tale of collective adventure, accomplished by researchers who seek to construct a different social science and by an author who resituates his contribution to theory and the knowledge of our times, indivisible from his life’s commitment. An initiation to social thinking of today – this book fills a gap.
Thinking Sociology in Uncertain Times Georges Balandier 328 pages • 22 €
Georges Balandier Anthropologist, sociologist and author, Georges Balandier has written a score of books read all over the world throughout the last fifty years. His work has been translated into Arabic, Bulgarian, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Turkish and Ukrainian.
September 2013
History Egyptian Hieroglyphs Jean Winand
128 pages • 9 € August 2013
Cultural Globalization François Chaubet 128 pages • 9 € March 2013 Indonesian rights sold
Ancient Egypt is inseparable from hieroglyphic writing. For more than one thousand five hundred years, these elegant, majestic signs were the very symbol of the Valley of the Nile in the eyes of the West; until 1822, when Champollion tore away the veil of mystery shrouding them. Until a short time ago, cuneiform script claimed the honour of being humanity’s most ancient form of writing. But the more recent discovery of new documents in Abydos, in Upper Egypt, challenges that claim. When we explore this language, we are exploring the very
origins of writing. As well as their formal beauty, Jean Winand invites us to uncover the meaning of hieroglyphs and discover the history of one of man’s most ancient languages.
Watching CNN, studying in Spain, travelling to faroff places on a regular basis, enjoying the talents of great international artists near one’s home: these are just a few frequent cultural practices today. They are an expression of the cultural globalization which has been on-going since the 19th century, a globalization just as clearly visible in world-wide scientific exchange as in great sporting events. The new world is portrayed by some as being totally uniform; they use terms such as ‘CocaCola-nisation’ or ‘Macworld’ – the latter merging the two brand names of McDonald’s and Macintosh (Apple). Others, on the contrary, put the accent on withdrawal. François Chaubet proposes a unique
overview of the different readings of this phenomenon. Is it a question of convergence? Or imperialism? A ‘Clash of Civilisations’ or - more sensitively expressed - of ‘hybridization’ and ‘glocalisation’?
Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Liege, Jean Winand is an Egyptologist.
Professor of Contemporary History at the Paris West University Nanterre, François Chaubet is a researcher at Sciences Po. With Laurent Martin, he co-authored Histoire des relations culturelles dans le monde contemporain (Armand Colin, 2011).
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History
could have been followed if Europe had not imprisoned itself in the market, then in financial liberalisation. Some ‘fireflies’ have shed their light on another possible Europe; could we follow the ways they illuminate?
Our Europe, as the crisis has revealed, is no more than one part of a world trade order, neoliberal and financialized. Right from the start, the aim was to be a paragon of such an order. To understand how this came about, this book interweaves the threads of two stories: that of the origins (Europe before the Treaty of Rome of 1957) marked by the failure of a political community; and that of the paths that
© Ch. Delory
The myth of Europe is striking in its ambiguity, like Europe itself: on the one hand the Grand Founding Narrative, on the other, the true story. This book tells a tale of paradox. Aiming to work for the realisation of the European ideal, the European process has, on the contrary, created the conditions of its disappearance.
Robert Salais is an economist and one of the founders of the economy of conventions. His research focuses on work, public policy and Europe, at the crossroads of economy and history. His books include: L’invention du chômage (Puf, 1986), Les mondes de production (Ed. de l’EHESS, 1993), Développer les capacités des hommes et des territoires en Europe (Ed. de l’ANACT, 2006).
The Rape of Europe Robert Salais
444 pages • 20 € August 2013
Gawain The Solar Knight Philippe Walter 324 pages • 24 € March 2013
Worthy knight of the Round table, Gawain remains too often neglected and misunderstood. In the shadow of Lancelot, commenters confine him to the role of a flighty seducer - even the constant second - walking in the footsteps of his uncle, King Arthur. Basing his reflection on comparative mythology, Philippe Walter paints the portrait of a hero, from his unique conception until his ‘death’, and lays bare the archaic myth attached to this knight, his ‘solar’ vocation. Chrétien de Troyes wrote about Gawain that ‘chivalry is enhanced by him, just as when the morning sun sheds its rays abroad and lights all places where it shines’. With his magical
horse and sword, Gawain’s brilliance is restored when we return to the old Celtic legends.
© Imago
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Philippe Walter is Professor of French Medieval Literature at the University of Grenoble-III. With Éditions Imago, he published Arthur, l’Ours et le Roi (new ed. 2008), Perceval, le Pêcheur et le Graal (2004), Galaad, le Pommier et le Graal (2004), Tristan et Yseut, le Porcher et la Truie (2006), La Fée Mélusine, le Serpent et l’Oiseau (2008), Merlin ou le Savoir du monde (new ed. 2010), and Mythologie chrétienne (new ed. 2011).
History
Forgetting the Apocalypse With a rich selection of testimonies from ‘poilus’ Thierry Hardier Jean-François Jagielski 300 pages • 22,50 € February 2013
The Great War in 100 Words André Loez
128 pages • 9 € September 2013
(soldiers of WW1) and the archives, Thierry Hardier and Jean-François Jagielski answer a multitude of questions in this book. How did military hierarchy regard the soldiers’ request to have some time to and for themselves? During WW1, what place did free time have? What were the soldiers’ manual and intellectual occupations during that time when they were free of all constraints? Among others, they mention: rat and flea hunting, a real game often collectively organized; poaching game and grenade fishing; setting up music-hall shows and cafés-chantant; resting in the soldiers’ Foyer specially built for the purpose in temporary barracks,
In 100 words and 128 pages, André Loez brings us a unique quintessence of accumulated knowledge and questions debated by historians concerning the Great War. He draws generously on quotations and words of that period in order to let us hear the voices of those involved and convey their experience of the war. Word after word, he recounts the beginning of war and its causes (‘Sarajevo’, ‘alliances’…), the conflict itself (‘Battle of the Marne’, ‘Gallipoli’, ‘revolutions’…), the deciders (‘Clemenceau’, ‘ Pétain’, colonial soldiers’, ‘munitions workers’…), life at the front (‘trenches’, ‘leave’, ‘barbed wire’…) society at home (‘inflation’, ‘propaganda’…), the vestiges of war (‘old soldiers’, ‘war memorials’,
making objects, especially jewellery from aluminium and sculptures from wood or stone; writing letters or notebooks; producing newspapers for the trenches, as well as getting collectively drunk… A major contribution to the historiography of the 14-18 war, this book gives us deeper knowledge of those men, adrift in a bloody torment and attempting, against all odds, to escape, even for a few moments.
Thierry Hardier and Jean-François Jagielski are teachers and members of the Great War International Research and Debate Collective (CRID 14-18).
‘never again !’…), remembrance (‘films’ ‘museums’…) and finally the terms that incite debate between historians (‘brutalisation’, ‘total war’).
André Loez is a Doctor of Contemporary History, Professor agrégé in prep classes (Lettres supérieures) and assistant professor for undergraduate degrees at Sciences Po. He published 14-18. Les refus de la guerre. Une histoire des mutins (Gallimard, ‘Folio histoire’, 2010) and La Grande Guerre (La Découverte, ‘Repères’, 2010). With Rémy Cazals, he co-authored 14-18. Vivre et mourir dans les tranchées (Tallandier, ‘Texto’, 2012).
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the arts
Apocalypse Manga
Under the sign of the universal catastrophe as we understand it since the two atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Apocalypse Manga explores the work of several Japanese manga authors who worked in the 50s and in our times, producing printed manga or animation. Observing how artists have reacted to the tragedies of WW2, the book studies such famous talents as Katsuhiro Otomo, Leiji Matsumoto and Hayao Miyazaki in order to sketch the portrait of a country committing its historical demons to the pages of comic books, and to make an analysis – both aesthetic and political – of an often disparaged artistic genre.
The book concludes with a manga which is extremely popular with young people today, One Piece by Eiichiro Oda, offering an ethical approach that challenges our vision of this type of commercial production.
New keys to understand contemporary art. Here, it’s not a question of trying to discern the meaning of artworks; this book focuses more on the forms of mediation associated with them – and on the way in which all these forms are conceived, disseminated and received. The author considers various approaches, all borrowed from the domain of pragmatics (linguistics). After observing concrete cases, he analyses the different situations of enunciation evoked by texts around the artworks or expositions. These texts are the settings for the enunciated, the enunciators and the enunciation; they have a certain performative dimension; they contain implicit or
underlying elements that challenge the relation of their authors to specific contexts and publics. Here, the question of dialogic, borrowed from Bakhtine, permits us to combine different approaches and look afresh at the circulation of the word – and meaning – around artworks.
Michel Houellebecq’s Houellebecq’s work is brimming with apparent contradictions. This short essay analyses them, Treasure Chest
like so many compartments that the reader is permitted to enter and explore, then to corroborate their echoes in Houellebecq’s oeuvre.
Pierre Pigot
256 pages • 22 € October 2013
Contemporary Art Between the Lines Jérôme Glicenstein 192 pages • 19,50 € October 2013
Bruno Viard
168 pages • 15 € April 2013
showing that they can be resolved, especially if we study their sources: Houellebecq’s books, a ‘treasure chest’ that contains both works of fiction (Charles Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust) and theoretical writings (Auguste Comte, Frederic Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Alexis de Tocqueville, Charles Fourier, Saint-Simon, Pierre Leroux, Karl Marx). These allusions are brief but they operate
Art historian, writer and critic, Pierre Pigot is an Internet member of the Fric-Frac Club whose work is situated at the crossroads of popular and classical cultures. He authored L’Assassinat de Mickey Mouse (Puf, 2011), translated into Chinese.
Jérôme Glicenstein is an artist and Professor at the Plastic Arts Dept. of the University Paris Vincennes-Saint-Denis. His teaching and research centres on theories and practice of exhibition. He also wrote L’art : une histoire d’expositions (Puf, 2009).
Bruno Viard, Professor of Literature at the University of Provence, is a member of the editorial committee of the Revue du MAUSS. Among other works, he published Les 100 mots du romantisme in the ‘Que sais-je ?’ series.
the arts
Philippe Jordan 128 pages • 9 € May 2013
Opera is a performance quite unlike any other: it summons all the arts, forging an alliance between text and music, attracting the greatest artists of the times for the artistic direction and decors. An Opera House is a building unlike any other: in big towns, it is one of the most prestigious edifices, a social marker of the city. Opera is a collective business: from singers to technicians, from the conductor to the musicians, each one works to make the performance a success. Opera is demanding: it requires its audience to become aware of its rituals and to adhere to a set of radical conventions (on the stage, everyone sings and everything is sung) and to yield to its delights. From ‘décor’ to ‘orchestra pit’, from ‘rehearsals’ to ‘first night’, Philippe Jordan invites us to discover opera in all its dimensions. Elucidating the tradi-
Proust in 100 Words Michel Erman 128 pages • 9 € May 2013
The work of Marcel Proust is a monument in paper, enough to frighten certain readers and fascinate others. But whatever the readers’ reaction – it holds a unique place in the history of literature. In 100 words, we (re)discover the man and his work in its multiple facets. During this stroll through Proust’s universe, by bicycle or train, on the Cabourg beaches or on the ChampsÉlysées, we encounter characters, engagements, expressions, a history of publishing, ‘bœuf mode’ as tasted in Proust, cattleyas, a literary vision, painting, a unique sentence, publishers, lies, and much more. In a progression of themes and terms, what Michel Erman reveals is essentially a vision, that of
tions of this musical genre through the prism of his own experience, he also reveals his conception of conducting an orchestra, the rapport with the audience, singers and stage directors.
©JF. Leclerc
Opera in 100 Words
Musical director of the Opéra National de Paris, Philippe Jordan, at the age of 38, is one of the world’s the most talented conductors. In concert, he has conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Wiener Philharmoniker, the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Vienna Radio Symphony orchestra, the Radio-France Philharmonic, the London Philarmonia, and many more. In North America, he has conducted the orchestras of Seattle, St-Louis, Dallas, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington, Minnesota, Montreal, New York and San Francisco.
Proust the narrator contemplating the spectacle of the passing world and reminding us that ‘lost time’ may only be recovered through words.
Michel Erman is a specialist of Marcel Proust’s work. He has already authored a bibliography of Proust (repr. La Table ronde, 2013), Le Bottin proustien and Le Bottin des lieux proustiens (La Table ronde, 2010 and 2011). A philosopher, he also wrote two essays published by Puf: one on La cruauté, published in 2009, the other entitled Éloge de la vengeance, in 2012.
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Psychoanalysis 18
Psychoanalysis
In reading great authors, Michel Schneider’s purpose is not to produce a literary analysis; he tells us what writers have taught the psychoanalyst, the figure who is ‘Read and Understood’ by literature. Both a psychoanalyst and a novelist, Michel Schneider has made a deep and extensive study of the relations – affinities and irrevocable differences – between writing and psychoanalysis. The chapters of this book open up psychoanalytical perspectives on masochism, psychosis, perversion… Literature is a prism that enlightens strange psychic situations: the torment of the analyst confronting his patients and himself, or the anguish of the writer. In this book, Pessoa, Proust, Schnitzler, Nabokov and Henry James appear to be the omnipresent protagonists
of Michel Schneider’s psychoanalytic. To understand what you read and read in order to understand. Michel Schneider evokes the three instances to which his intellectual life has been subjected: power, literature, and psychoanalysis. He might have added music…
Michel SCHNEIDER is a psychoanalyst and an author. This book is his twentieth, following essays on psychoanalysis (Blessures de mémoire, Voleurs de mots), politics (La comédie de la culture, Big mother), literature (Proust, Baudelaire), music (Schumann, Opera) and three novels, notably Marilyn dernières séances (Prix Interallié 2006). Puf published his Lacan, les années fauve.
Read and Understood Michel Schneider 312 pages • 22 € April 2013
Burdensome Fathers Many forms of burdensome fathers have existed. Patrick Avrane
192 pages • 17 € August 2013
As we look back over history, our image of the father as in Freudian mythology dissipates when we read the case of Amile, who was motherless, and Palmira. Quintilian has to face a father who shied away from his responsibilities as did the novelist Modiano’s father, or the hero of Fellini’s Il Bidone. Semele is constantly under the watchful eye of her father, who, without showing it, reigns over the house like the pater familias we discern in Vermeer’s painting. The shot fired at Jules Verne by his nephew, and the misdeeds of his son that drove Verne to having him confined, show how a novelist renowned for his stories for teenagers could also be a burdensome father through his own faults. When her father died, Tullia was idolised by her mother,
as was Lasthénie de Ferjol, Barbey d’Aurevilly’s heroine. In prison, Urania’s father is seen to be a crook, like Marius in Pagnol’s trilogy. Paternity is an enigma, and when it is inflexible, as in the works quoted above, it becomes a burden. Sigmund Freud is not exculpated in his strange relations with his daughter Anna.
Patrick Avrane, is a psychoanalyst and a writer. He has written many essays. The latest, Les Chagrins d’amour, was published by Le Seuil in 2012.
Psychoanalysis
Gérard Pommier 328 pages • 24 € January 2013
Of Elation Paul Denis
208 pages • 22 € April 2013
Firstly, this book recalls the history of the name, from its sacred meaning to its use in official records, whether of patrilineal or matrilineal filiation. From the philosophical viewpoint, it distinguishes the proper from the common noun. Anthropologically, it defines the giving and the reception of a name, according to its different sub-groups: family name and surname. The author lists the different functions of the name: identification, sexual role, cornerstone of the conscience, engagement of speech. Lastly, it treats pathologies of the name,
from ordinary amnesia to the forclusion of psychoses. The author concludes by evoking the function of the name in writing.
The feeling of elation would appear to be a common denominator of differently organized affects, all of which convey the impression of an enlargement of the self, or of the reconstitution of its unity. One could describe a spirit of elation spanning from manic – in the psychiatric sense of the word – to the oceanic feeling experienced by religious crowds, in mysticism, the feeling of triumph; in everyday psychology it reaches from pleasure in reaction to success, a celebration - or even more prosaic - what is perceived as a personal improvement, an enrichment of the Ego. What emerges is the experience of elation in intense instances of love but also hate, at high moments of
life in groups, in stadiums, in crowds… when questions of ideals and the construction of identity are foremost.
Gérard Pommier, is a psychoanalyst in Paris, a psychiatrist, Professor Emeritus at the University Paris 7 Diderot, member of the Espace Analytique. His books include Naissance et renaissance de l’écriture (Puf, 1993) and Que veut dire « faire » l’amour ? (Flammarion, 2010).
Paul DENIS, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is a tenured member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society. Member of the editorial committee of La psychiatrie de l’enfant, he edited La Revue française de psychanalyse and has authored many articles and several books, notably Emprise et satisfaction, les deux formants de la pulsion, Rives et dérives du Contre transfert and two works in the ‘Que sais-je ?’ series: Les phobies and Le narcissisme.
© Pasted graphic
Names
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Psychoanalysis
This book explores the representations of society and culture that Freud elaborated throughout his life’s work. Far from contemporary sociological and anthropological conceptions, they led to his construction of a personal socio-anthropology which was virulently criticised by the social sciences. But here, what culture, and what society are we discussing? That of his own Vienna, the West, ‘primitive’ and historical peoples, or the society and culture of human categories?
This book provides some answers, while presenting a construction of the Freudian notion of Kulturarbeit – never really defined although central to his work – based on socio-anthropological writings and other major texts. In conclusion, the author furthers research initiated by The Oedipus Complex, crystallising of a psychoanalytical/anthropological debate (Puf, 2009).
Many other questions are raised: what are the fundamental features of a culture, its functions, its relations with society and its members, but also with nature, with other aspects of ‘reality’ or the ‘outside world’? What history did Freud ‘reconstruct’? (phylogeny). What roles does culture play in the development of all individuals (ontogeny), or in the construction and the functioning of the psyche?
Éric Smadja is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society. Anthropologist, therapist specializing in couples and associate member of the American Anthropological Association, he received the prize for an exceptional contribution to psychoanalytical research awarded by the International Psychoanalytical Association in 2007. His published works include: Le complexe d’Œdipe, cristallisateur du débat psychanalyse / anthropologie (Puf, 2009) and Couples en psychanalyse (Puf, 2013).
Couples Through accounts of case histories including Therapy in clinical, technical and theoretical aspects, this Psychoanalysis book presents conjugal problematics inherent
birth of a baby, as well as two painful situations regularly encountered: conjugal violence and extraconjugal relations.
Freud and Culture Éric Smadja
232 pages • 20 € September 2013
By the same author Éric Smadja
160 pages • 14 € May 2013 Korean rights sold
to the life of all couples such as sexuality and the desire for children, the critical stage of the
Psychoanalysis
Childhood in 100 Words Jacques André (ed.) 128 pages • 9 € August 2013
Male Sexuality Jacques André 128 pages • 9 € February 2013 Greek rights sold
The child is not content simply to learn its mother tongue; it constructs its own unique dialect within that language. This book seeks to know children better by studying their language, from ‘That’s not fair’ to ‘You’re not my pal anymore’ not forgetting ‘Again’ and ‘When I’m big…’ Beyond these children’s expressions, it also analyses those – such as hurt, nightmare, boredom, innocence, secrets – that describe the world of childhood and the uniqueness of that experience.
Each of the 100 words in this book is both an invitation to look more closely and observantly at our children and to recall those childhood years. It reminds us that children don’t simply ask questions that adults can never answer to their satisfaction; they are, in their own way, budding philosophers who comment on life’s eternal enigmas, the kind that are as old as mankind.
Women aren’t what they used to be; the days when they discovered the male erection on their wedding nights are now prehistory. Yet the freedom woman have gained has not necessarily created the equivalent for men. With more sexual liberty, male sexuality has gained, above all, in terms of uncertainty and questions – which makes it interesting. All the more so because the ‘liberation’ did not stop at setting woman’s femininity free: man’s femininity was also liberated.
The most recent wave of emancipation involves sexual choice, the freedom to be guided by one’s desires for the opposite sex, or for the same. So what can we say today about male sexuality? Based on testimonies gathered on the psychiatrist’s couch as well as in the pages of diaries and correspondence, Jacques André conducts a no-holds-barred investigation of the most intimate regions of men’s sex lives.
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Jacques André Psychoanalyst, member of the Association psychanalytique de France, Jacques André is a Professor of Psychopathology at Paris Diderot University. He directs the ‘Petite bibliothèque de psychanalyse’ series for Puf. A prolific author, he wrote La sexualité féminine in the ‘Que sais-je ?’ series and edited Sexuality in 100 Words. His most recent work published is Paroles d’hommes (Gallimard, 2011).
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Psychoanalysis
Portrait of Sigmund Freud The Treasures of a Correspondence
André Bolzinger
420 pages • 29,50 € October 2012
Unpardonable Ferenczi Yves Lugrin
372 pages • 28 € March 2012
An unusual and surprising portrait of Sigmund Freud. Decoding the inventor of psychoanalysis’ vast correspondence, André Bolzinger describes a man who is both philanthropic and misanthropic, a rebel yet resigned, prudent and rash, Jewish and atheist, Germanophile and anti-Prussian, an attentive father to his children and colleague to fellow travellers. This masterly book is based on a meticulous reading of the ensemble of Freud’s letters.
those he refuses, his culture, his likes and dislikes. The thematic and global presentation makes this book read like an epic.
The author invites us to travel through the life of the Viennese doctor, to meet his friends and colleagues, discover the things that interest him and
André Bolzinger is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, associate member of the Société de psychanalyse freudienne, graduate of the Académie de médecine. His published works include: La Réception de Freud en France (L’Harmattan, 1999); Freud et les Parisiens (2002); Arcanes de la psychose, retour au texte de Schreber (2005); Histoire de la nostalgie (2009), Editions Campagne Première.
Though a central figure in the history of psychoanalysis, Sandor Ferenczi (1873-1933) remains marginal in relation to classic authors, so nourishing the misunderstanding at the root of his companionship with Freud. The unfinished dialogue between Ferenczi and Freud nevertheless permits us to understand the ever-open and pressingly contemporary question of the institutional transmission of psychoanalysis.
Yves Lugrin is a psychoanalyst, associate member of the Société de psychanalyse freudienne (SPF), and author of numerous articles.
Translating and disseminating the French Sciences and Humanities Beijing / May 7, 2013 The Journée professionnelle, organized on the initiative of Puf with the support of the Institut Français and The Commercial Press, assembled authors and translators in the aim of launching a collective reflection on French psychoanalysis and its translation in China.
16h30-17h: How do you translate a work about psychoanalysis from French into Chinese? (Xu Dan, doctoral candidate in psychopathology and psychoanalysis, Paris Diderot University, translator of many articles and of Monique Lauret’s work Lectures du rêve).
13h30-14h: Reception of participants and welcoming speech, direction of Editions Shangwu and Nicolas Idier, cultural attaché (French Embassy in China).
17h-17h30h: closing speech (Monique lauret)
14h-14h30: Introduction: Translation in China: the context (Pr. Cong Zhong, Hospital N°6 attached to University of Beijing).
Buenos aires / May 23, 2013
14h30-15h: The development of psychoanalysis in China: the contribution made by French specialists (Sabine Parmentier, Psychoanalyst, Doctor of Linguistics, member of the Espace analytique). 15h-16h: Publishing psychoanalysis in France: a news panorama (Monique Lauret, member of the Espace analytiqueParis and member of the European Foundation for Psychoanalysis; psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, research associate in hospitals; Eric Smajda, member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, anthropologist and therapist specializing in the couple and the family). 16h-16h30: Break
Encouraged by the recent increase in transactions involving translations, the Book Office in Buenos Aires and Presses Universitaires de France organised a meeting devoted to translators of social sciences and humanities. This meeting, which took place at the Alliance Française in Buenos Aires, focused on the difficulties and specificities of translation in the domain of social sciences and humanities, from the contribution made by translators to the dissemination of French ideas, and the multiple possibilities offered to authors by translation projects (writing prefaces, adding chapters, updating bibliographies, corrections). All the participants, about twenty Argentinian translators, shared their experience and their knowledge.
Frankfurt Book Fair 9 -13 October 2013 Stand 6.1 A 114
Foreign Rights Department 6, avenue Reille 75685 Paris cedex 14 FRANCE Phone: 33 1 58 10 31 00 Fax: 33 1 70 76 65 59
Foreign Rights Manager Ms Maria Vlachou
Phone: 33 1 58 10 31 55 vlachou@puf.com
Departmental accounts Ms Alexandra PERNIN Phone: 33 1 58 10 31 69 pernin@puf.com
Translation
Catalogue 2013
Foreign Rights
Ms Catherine MacMillan
Conception and production Mr Laurent Marquès