Didier Eribon

Didier Eribon (born 10 July 1953) is a French author and philosopher, and a historian of French intellectual life.

Biography

Didier Eribon was born in Reims.^[1] His biography of Michel Foucault (1989), published in English in 1991, has been praised by Pierre Bourdieu, Paul Veyne, Paul Rabinow and Hayden White, among others, and is considered in France, according to Le Monde, as the best biography of Foucault. His 1988 book of conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss came out in English also in 1991.

Didier Eribon is professor at the School of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the University of Amiens (France). He has for years been running a seminar at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He has also been Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley for several years, and at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has lectured in a great number of countries and, in the U.S., at The New School, University of Chicago, Harvard University, Yale University, New York University (NYU), the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, Columbia University^[2] among others. He was one of the speakers at the Conference "Foucault in Berkeley. Twenty Years Later", held in Berkeley October 2004, with Leo Bersani, Judith Butler, Paul Rabinow, Hubert Dreyfus, Michael Lucey, and others.

He is the author of several books already considered as "classics", including his Réflexions sur la question gay (Insult and the Making of the Gay Self) in 1999, Une morale du minoritaire in 2001 and, in 2005, Echapper à la psychanalyse (Escaping Psychoanalysis).

Between 1984 until rencently, Eribon wrote frequently for Le Nouvel Observateur, the famous French weekly magazine in which he reviewed books in the fields of philosophy and social sciences. He currently lives in Paris.

He is the recipient of the 2008 Brudner Prize.^[3] But he returned the prize in May 2011 (see his letter: "I Return the Brudner Prize" on his personal homepage).

His 2009 book Returning to Reims has had an impact beyond the field of sociology. French novelist, Édouard Louis cites the book as having "marked a turning point for his future as a writer."^[4] Additionally, the book was adapted for the stage by Laurent Hatat, which debuted at the Festival Avignon in July, 2014,^[5] and by Thomas Ostermeier, as part of the 2017 Manchester International Festival.^[6] The book also received enthusiastic reviews in the French press, such as Le Monde, Libération, L’Express and Les Inrockuptibles.^[7]

Works

• Michel Foucault. Trans. Betsy Wing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991.
• Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss, by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Didier Eribon, Translated by Paula Wissing. University of Chicago Press, 192 pages. April 1991
• Faut-il brûler Dumézil? Mythologie, science et politique, 1992
• Michel Foucault et ses contemporains (1994).
• Insult and the Making of the Gay Self. (originally Réflexions sur la question gay (1999)) Translated by Michael Lucey. Duke University Press, 440 pages. July 2004
• Papiers d'identité (2000).
• Une morale du minoritaire. Variations sur un thème de Jean Genet (2001)
• Hérésies. Essais sur la théorie de la sexualité (2003)
• Sur cet instant fragile... Carnets, janvier-août 2004 (2004).
• Echapper à la psychanalyse (2005).
• D'une revolution conservatrice et de ses effets sur la gauche francaise (2007).
• Retour à Reims (2009).

Notes and references

External links

• Site personnel de Didier Eribon - Didier Eribon's personal homepage
• On Social Verdict: Classes, Identities, Trajectories by Didier Eribon - (Video) on YouTube at Columbia Maison Française