t h e / u n t i m e l y / p a s t
the bibliography project
michel de certeau
last modified: 19 February 2000
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Ahearne, Jeremy. Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and Its Other. Cambridge: Polity Press, and Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Key Contemporary Thinkers.
"Michel de Certeau died on January 9, 1986, leaving behind him the memory of an 'intelligence without bounds' (Roger Chartier) and of 'one of the boldest, the most secret, and the most sensitive minds of our time' (Julia Kristeva). Since 1984, with the translation of The Practice of Everyday Life, his writings have begun to circulate acrtoss a number of disciplines in the English-speaking world.
"This book is the first full-length study of Certeau's thought, designed as a guide to draw out not only the exceptional range but the overall coherence of his oeuvre. The author focuses on those intertexts that work most powerfully in Certeau's major writings: contemporary French historiography, the writings of early modern mystics and travelers, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, Freud, the linguistics of 'utterance,' and a broad spectrum of work on contemporary cultural practices." from the back cover
Contents: Introduction. Part I. Implications. 1. The Historiographical Operation. 2. Interpretation and its Archaeology. Part II. Fables. 3. Voices in the Text. 4. Mystics. Part III. Strategies and Tactics. 5. Strategic Operations. 6. Turns and Diversions. Conclusion: Thought in Motion.
Arens, Katherine, "Discourse Analysis as Critical Historiography: A semanalyse of Mystic Speech." Rethinking History , 2:1 (Spring 1998), 23-50.
"Abstract: This paper traces a model for critical linguistics used as a historiography in the work of Michel de Certeau, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray, an approach that Kristeva terms a semanalyse, an analysis that critiques the social space and subjectivity produced by the language shared by a community. This essay presents this critical historiography as used in three essays on early modern mysticism, De Certeau's Mystic Fable shows how the space of linguistic (semiotic) representation is closely linked to social subjectivity in an era that was actively rewriting its fables while it was rewriting its religious practices. His work is paralleled by a pair of essays that Kristeva and Irigaray contributed to a museum catalogue on mystical art edited by Paul Vandenbroeck, Le Jardin clos de l'ame."
Bogue, R., Review of The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau. Comparative Literature 38:4 (1986), 367-370.
Brammer, Marsanne. "Thinking Practice: Michel de Certeau and the Theorization of Mysticism." Diacritics. 22:2 (Summer 1992), 26-
Buchanan, Ian. "Writing the Wrongs of History: de Certeau and Post-Colonialism." Span. 33 (May 1992), 39-
De Certeau, Michel, "Mystique." Diacritics 22:2 (1992), 11-25. Translated by M. Brammer.
Originally published in the Encyclopedia Universalis (1971).
De Certeau, Michel The Practice of Everyday Life. 1974; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Translated by Steven Rendall.
Originally published as L'invention du quotidien. Vol. 1, Arts de faire (1974).
"The Practice of Everyday Life, published in 1974 and now the first of his books available in English translation, offers ample evidence why we should pay heed to de Certeau and why more of us have not done so. For one, the work all but defies definition. History, sociology, economics, literature and literary criticism, philosophy, and anthropology all come within de Certeau's ken. ... The Practice of Everyday life marks a turning point in studies of culture away from the producer (writer, scientist, city planner) and the product (book, discourse, city street) to the consumer (reader, pedestrian)." Priscilla P. Clark, Journal of Modern History, cited on the back cover of the paperback edition.
Contents: General Introduction. Part I: A Very Ordinary Culture. I. A Common Place: Ordinary Language. II. Popular Cultures: Ordinary Language. III. "Making Do": Uses and Tactics. Part II: Theories of the Art of Practice. IV. Foucault and Bourdieu. V. The Arts of Theory. VI. Story Time. Part III: Spatial Practices. VIII. Walking in the City. VIII. Railway Navigation and Incarceration. IX. Spatial Stories. Part IV: Uses of Language. X. The Scriptural Economy. XI. Quotations of Voices. XII. Reading as Poaching. Part V: Ways of Believing. XIII. Believing and Making People Believe. XIV. The Unnamable. Indeterminate.
De Certeau, Michel Cultural in the Plural. 1974; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Luce Giard, Ed. Translated by Tom Conley.
Originally published as La culture au pluriel (Union Generale d'Editions, 1974).
"In this long-awaited translation, Michel de Certeau anticipates current debates surrounding multiculturalism and social diversity, providing a prescient critique of identity politics.
"De Certeau considers the idea of culture itself, unveiling the specific political and social conflicts culture is designed to conceal. He then looks at culture from several methodological and theoretical points of view, positioning his ideal of culture in the plural in opposition to an exclusivist notion of culture as 'the best that has been thought and said.'" from the back cover
Contents: Luce Giard, "Introduction: Opening the Possible." Part I: Exoticisms and Ruptures of Language. 1. The Revolution of the 'Believeable'. 2. The Imaginary of the City. 3. The Language of Violence. Part II: New Marginalisms. 4. Universities versus Popular Culture. 5. Culture and the Schools.6. Minorities. Part III: Cultural Politics. 7. The Social Architecture of Knowledge. 8. Culture within Society. 9. The Place from Which One Deals with Culture. 10. Conclusion: Spaces and Practices. Tom Conley, "Afterword: A Creative Swarm."
De Certeau, Michel The Writing of History. 1975; New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. European Perspectives series. Translated by Tom Conley.
Originally published as L'ecriture de l'histoire (Editions Gallimard, 1975).
"Michel de Certeau (1926-1986) combined principles from the disciplines of religion, history, and psychoanalysis in order to redefine historiography and rethink categories of history. The Writing of History -- one of his major works -- analyzes the origins of Western history from Europe's first encounter with America to the West's desire to have the past function as a model mediating and explaining the present, and our sense of the past as a reflection of death irreducible to the present.
"De Certeau first discusses our current system of historiography through a socioepistemological approach that evaluates the literature which has dominated the field throughout the century. He next examines the process by which seventeenth- and eighteenth-century practices of conduct, religion, and politics crisscross but inevitably lead to a gnosis in which the 'history of man' is victorious in the wake of the Enlightenment.
"Then, using a semiotic approach, de Certeau views the European discovery of America in terms of an encounter between a religious, oral culture (the sixteenth-century western hemisphere) and an entrepreneurial, scriptural society of expansion (Europe). Finally, de Certeau determines how Freud's concept of history, as expressed in Totem and Taboo and Moses and Monotheism, reflects and extends our obsessions with the past and with writing." from the dust jacket
Contents: Translator's Introduction: For a Literary Historiography. Preface. Introduction: Writings and Histories. Part I: Productions of Places. 1. Making History: Problems of Method and Problems of Meaning. 2. The Historiographical Operation. Part II: Productions of Time: A Religious Archaeology. Introduction: Questions of Method. 3. The Inversion of What Can Be Thought: Religious History in the Seventeenth Century. 4. The Formality of Practices: From Religious Systems to the Ethics of the Enlightenment (The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries). Part III: Systems of Meaning: Speech and Writing. 5. Ethno-Graphy: Speech, or the Space of the Other: Jean de Lery. 6. Language Altered: The Sorcerer's Speech. 7. A Variant: Hagio-Graphical Edification. Part IV: Freudian Writing. 8. What Freud Makes of History: "A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis". 9. The Fiction of History: The Writing of Moses and Monotheism.
De Certeau, Michel, "Psychoanalysis and Its History." in Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourses on the Other. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Theory and History of Literature series, vol. 17. Translated by Brian Massumi.
Originally published as "Histoire et psychanalyse," in La nouvelle histoire, J. Le Goff, R. Chartier, and J. Revel, Eds. (Paris: Editions Retz, 1978), pp. 477-487.
De Certeau, Michel The Mystic Fable. Vol. 1, The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 1982; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Translated by Michael B. Smith.
Originally published as La fable mystique, vol. 1, XVIe-XVIIe siecle (1982).
De Certeau, Michel Heterologies: Discourses on the Other. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Theory and History of Literature series, vol. 17. Translated by Brian Massumi.
"In bringing together numerous essays drawn from de Certeau's writings, Heterologies illustrates the diverse concerns that inform his work. 'The Freudian Novel: History and Literature' examines the fictional aspect of Freud's writing, its legitimization, and its relationship to the institution of psychiatry; similarly, 'Psychoanalysis and Its History' and 'Lacan: An Ethics of Speech' probe the interaction of psychoanalytic theory and history. The collection includes essays on historiography, 'popular culture,' Jules Verne, Montaigne, Dumas, and Michel Foucault. 'The Laugh of Michel Foucault' is an extraordinarily elegant piece explaining the chance discoveries, the 'bouts of surprise,' that triggered 'thinking otherwise' for Foucault. De Certeau analyzes mysticism in 'Mystic Speech' and touches upon it again in 'The Institution of Rot' and 'Surin's Melancholy,' bringing to this volume the question of religious as well as socio-political and literary discourses. In his foreward, Wlad Godzich plots the course of the contemporary reorganization of knowledge and shows the major role that de Certeau's work plays in questioning the bases of such reorganization." from the back cover
De Certeau, Michel, "The Gaze of Nicholas of Cusa." Diacritics 17:3 (Fall 1987), 2-38.
De Certeau, Michel, "Travel Narratives of the French to Brazil: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries." Representations 33 (Winter 1991), 221-
De Certeau, Michel, "Mysticism." Diacritics 22:2 (Summer 1992), 11-
De Certeau, Michel, "Vocal Utopias: Glossolalias." Representations 56 (Fall 1996)
See excerpt at: http://violet.berkeley.edu:7000/R56/DeCerteau.html
De Certeau, Michel. The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings. University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Introduction by Luce Giard. Translated and with an afterword by Tom Conley.
"Who has the right to speak? How is this right acquired? What happens when this right is denied or inhibited? These are the questions examined by Michel de Certeau in this foundational exploration of political expression and participation.
"In The Capture of Speech, de Certeau identifies "communication" as the irreducible element in the politics of modern societies. Moving beyond formal or legal definitions of rights, he argues that to "communicate" in a contemporary political system means not only having the abstract possibility of utterance, but possessing the conditions that allow being heard. De Certeau emphasizes that all too often free speech is upheld in the abstract while social institutions work in such a way as to deny access to effective communication.
"The book's title essay was written in response to the revolutionary events of May 1968 and established de Certeau's public reputation as an intellectual with great insight into the ramifications and possibilities of those revolts. Almost thirty years later, these essays remain a central resource for exploring de Certeau's political thought, particularly his preoccupation with achieving authentic and substantive social diversity. The Capture of Speech not only provides the basis for a pragmatics of utopian thinking, but also is a testament to the force of the intellectual revolutions that have marked Western culture since 1968."
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Conley, Tom, "Michel de Certeau and the Textual Icon." Diacritics 22:2 (Summer 1992), 38-
Frow, John, "Michel de Certeau and the Practice of Representation." Cultural Studies 5:1 (January 1991), 52-60.
Giand, Luce, "Epilogue: Michel de Certeau's Heterology and the New World." Representations 33 (1991), 212-221.
Maclean, I. W. F., "The Heterologies of Michel de Certeau." Paragraph 9 (1987), 83-87.
Pickering, Jean, and Suzanne Kehde, "Reading de Certeau through Mahasweta Devi: Reading Mahasweta Devi." Narrative 6:3 (October 1998), 341-
Poster, Mark, "The Question of Agency: Michel de Certeau and the History of Consumerism." Diacritics 22:2 (Summer 1992), 94-
Schalk, David L., Review of Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and Its Other, by Jeremy Ahearne. American Historical Review 102:5 (December 1997), 1455-1456.
Schirato, Tony, "My Space or Yours? De Certeau, Frow and the Meanings of Popular Culture." Cultural Studies 7:2 (May 1992), 282-291.
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