Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Vidal-Naquet | |
---|---|
Born | Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet 23 July 1930 Paris, France |
Died | 29 July 2006 Nice, France | (aged 76)
Academic work | |
Discipline | Historian |
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet (French pronunciation:
Vidal-Naquet was a specialist in the study of
Biography
Vidal-Naquet's family belonged to the
After his studies at the lycée Carnot in Paris, he specialized in the history of Ancient Greece, as well as in contemporary subjects such as the Algerian War (1954–1962) and the Holocaust. He read Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat, a book attempting to explain the causes of the defeat during the 1940 Battle of France, which is one of the origins of his vocation as a historian. He discovered surrealism (André Breton, René Char and also Antonin Artaud), and founded a review at 18 years old, along with Pierre Nora, Imprudence. The 1949 Rajk trial definitively took out his will to adhere to the French Communist Party (PCF).[citation needed]
Pierre Vidal-Naquet first taught history at Orléans's high school (1955), before going to then University of Caen (1956–60) and then Lille (1961–62). Reading Dumézil and Lévi-Strauss, he would become a member of the "Paris School", originally composed of Jean-Pierre Vernant, Nicole Loraux, Marcel Detienne and himself. Their work would renew approaches to the study of Ancient Greece.[1]
He then worked at the
Vidal-Naquet co-authored several books with his colleague and friend Jean-Pierre Vernant. However, although Vernant was a "comrade" of the French Communist Party (PCF), Vidal-Naquet never belonged to any political party, with the exception of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU), which he considered a "mere discussion circle."[2]
Pierre Vidal-Naquet was married and the father of three children. He was also officer of the
Pierre Vidal-Naquet was an atheist.[3]
Activism
Pierre Vidal-Naquet defined himself as an "activist historian", and while pursuing his studies never ceased engaging in political struggles and taking part in political committees, etc. A member of the Comité Audin, along with Jérôme Lindon (editor of the
He was also opposed to the
With Michel Foucault and Jean-Marie Domenach, on 8 February 1971 he signed the manifesto of the Groupe d'informations sur les prisons, which, rather than speaking in the name of prisoners, aimed to give back to them the chance of speaking in their own voice.[citation needed]
Vidal-Naquet was also active in condemning
Let us imagine a negationist Robert Faurisson as a governmental minister, a Faurisson president of the Republic, a Faurisson general, a Faurisson ambassador, a Faurisson president of the Turkish Historical Commission and a member of the senate of the University of Istanbul, a Faurisson member of the United Nations, a Faurisson responding in the press each time the question of the Jews is raised. In brief, a state-sponsored Faurisson paired with an international Faurisson and, along with all that, a
Vidal-Naquet was one of the first scholars to deconstruct
Criticism
While his analyses e.g. of
Works
Ancient Greece
- Clisthène l'Athénien, 1964 (with Pierre Lévêque) [Cleisthenes the Athenian: An Essay on the Representation of Space and of Time in Greek Political Thought from the End of the Sixth Century to the Death of Plato, Humanities Press, 1996]
- La Grèce ancienne - Du mythe à la raison, with Jean-Pierre Vernant, Le Seuil, coll. Points, 1990
- La Grèce ancienne - L'espace et le temps, with Jean-Pierre Vernant, Le Seuil, coll. Points, 1991
- La Grèce ancienne - Rites de passage et transgressions, with Jean-Pierre Vernant, Le Seuil, coll. Points, 1992
- Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne, with Jean-Pierre Vernant, La Découverte, 2000
- Les Grecs, les historiens et la démocratie, La Découverte, 2000
- Œdipe et ses mythes, with Jean-Pierre Vernant, Complexe, 2001
- La démocratie grecque vue d'ailleurs, Flammarion, coll. Champs, 2001
- Le chasseur noir - Formes de pensées et formes de société dans le monde grec, Francois Maspero, Paris 1981
- Le miroir brisé : tragédie athénienne et politique, Les Belles Lettres, 2002 (new edition)
- Travail et esclavage en Grèce ancienne, with Jean-Pierre Vernant, Complexe, 2002
- Le monde d'Homère, Perrin, 2002
- Fragments sur l'art antique, Agnès Viénot, 2002
- L'Atlantide. Petite histoire d'un mythe platonicien, Les Belles Lettres, 2005 ; ISBN 2-251-38071-X.
Algeria
- L'Affaire Audin, 1957-1978, éditions de Minuit, 1989 [nouvelle édition augmentée]
- La torture dans la République : essai d'histoire et de politique contemporaine, 1954-1962, Minuit, 1998 (Torture: Cancer in Democracy, out of print)
- Les crimes de l'armée française Algérie 1954-1962, La Découverte, 2001 (Préface inédite de l'auteur)
- La Raison d'État. Textes publiés par le Comité Audin, La Découverte, 2002 (nouvelle édition du livre publié en 1962 aux éditions de Minuit)
Jewish history and revisionism
- The Assassins of Memory and Other Essays, articles on Robert Faurisson, Noam Chomsky and revisionism (French: Les Assassins de la mémoire, Le Seuil, 1995)
- Les Juifs, la mémoire et le présent, Le Seuil, 1995
- La solution finale dans l'histoire, with Arno Mayer, La Découverte, 2002
Other
- Le trait empoisonné, La Découverte, 1993 (about Jean Moulin)
- "A Dangerous Game". Telos 98-99 (Winter 1993-Fall 1994). New York: Telos Press.
- Mémoires t.1 - La brisure et l'attente, 1930-1955, Le Seuil, 1998
- Mémoires t.2 - Le trouble et la lumière, 1955-1998, Le Seuil, 1998
References
- S2CID 238940277.
- ^ a b “Le Dernier des dreyfusards”, article on Vidal-Naquet in Le Figaro, September 6, 2004
- ^ "In 1950 Vidal-Naquet declared to his future wife Genevive Railhac that "as an atheist, history is for me the only possible substitute for religion"." Oswyn Murray, Obituary: Pierre Vidal-Naquet, The Independent (London), August 4, 2006, Pg. 43.
- ISSN 0741-8450. Archived from the originalon 4 June 2011. Retrieved 22 November 2009.
- ^ Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. The Jews: History, Memory, and the Present. 1996, page 169
- ^ Interview with Vidal-Naquet Archived 2006-05-15 at the Wayback Machine on the Human Rights League (LDH) website (in French)
- ^ “Au service du racisme”, in L'Humanité, 7 June 1990
- , Milan, 1997, p. 62-75.
External links
- Pierre Vidal-Naquet.net
- Obituary (in English) or in French[permanent dead link] from L'Humanité
- Obituary by Julian Jackson, The Guardian, August 10, 2006
- Paul Berman, "Denying the Deniers", New York Times Magazine, December 31, 2006
- NY Review of Books, a few manifestos and petitions signed by Vidal-Naquet over the years