Jacques Le Research Articles

The trajectories and choices of Jean-Claude Schmitt

In this interview, one of today's best-known French medievalists, Jean-Claude Schmitt, responds to various questions about his theoretical and methodological choices as well as the themes of his recent work. Schmitt is known as one of the main heirs of the anthropological history of Jacques Le Goff, and sums up his trajectory which resulted in a variety of work ranging from editing documents to work on medieval images, without ever losing sight of his commitment to questioning the beliefs of men and sojourns into the imagery of the Middle Ages in western culture.

French Schools During the “Long 12th Century”. Outside Paris: Lan, Tourney and Saint Omer

The study of masters and schools of the “long 12th century” seems to be a common topic for medieval studies. Throughout the 20th century, the history of medieval education has been the subject of research for such famous medievalists as Jacques Le Goff, Richard William Southern, Jacques Verger and many others. However, these were the ideas of the famous medieval masters that usually attracted the attention of researchers. Less successful medieval schools were mostly deprived of the attention of the medievalists, although the mere proof of their existence would allow a little deeper understanding of the 12th century French school world. The current article aims to fill this gap by proposing a methodology for studying medieval schools that takes into account the extent to which sources document their existence. For this purpose, examples of schools of different degrees of fame were analyzed: the popular school is represented by the Anselm of Laon’s one, the school of Odon of Tournai was chosen as a representative of a small pedagogical center, and the case of a little-known school was analyzed on the basis of the one at the church of St. Julia and Victor in Saint Omer. This main section of the current article is preceded by an analysis of the historiographic and source problems. From the point of view of historiography, the lack of reflection on the concept of “school” characteristic even for the specialized studies presents the greatest difficulty. From the source point of view, the difficulty is caused by the lack of special school terminology in the sources which is inevitable for medieval schools that lacked autonomy up to university period. In addition, the study of schools of the 12th century requires taking into account the distinctive feature of them which is personalization. The practical expression of this feature is the source references to specific masters, but not to schools. The main part of the article demonstrates that by taking into account the aforementioned historiographic and source study features, it becomes possible to add to the geographical map of the 12th century France not only the schools of famous masters, but also small pedagogical centers.

DE-LACANIZING BIOGRAPHIES: LACAN’S, FREUD’S AND ONE’S OWN. AN INTERVIEW WITH ÉLISABETH ROUDINESCO

Logos interviewed the well-known psychoanalyst and historian of psychoanalysis on the occasion of the release of the Russian translation of her biography Freud: In His Time and Ours as a joint publication of the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture and Ad Marginem Press. The interview begins with a review of her intellectual biography: her education, those who influenced her (Althusser, Canguilhem, de Certeau, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Michelle Perrot), studies of the history of psychoanalysis (Jacques Lacan’s biography, the history of French psychoanalysis, the vocabulary of psychoanalysis, works on the “geopolitics” of psychoanalysis), and her debate with radical anti-Freudians (Onfray and American historians of psychoanalysis). When Roudinesco saw that there was no holistic and French approach to the figure of Freud, she undertook a study modelled on medievalist Jacques Le Goff ’s biography of Saint Louis (King Louis IX of France). That choice was deliberate because the history of modern subjectivity can be traced back to the Early Middle Ages when private confidential confession replaced the public admission of fault. Roudinesco felt that it was important to “de-Lacanize” Freud (just as Lacan himself had previously refused to treat his biography in terms of his own theory). A biography of Freud should be both familial and political (covering issues of emancipation and Jewish assimilation among others). One of the keys to his success was the elevation of individual clinical problems to a universal cultural-mythological level. Freud did not reveal the unconscious as the source of human behaviour. Instead, he converted the familial and political circumstances of his era into the unconscious. His errors and should be explained rather than charged against him. At the close of the interview, Roudinesco speaks out about current French and Russian political issues.

O currículo da instrução pública primária no Império: as meninas na província do Rio Grande do Norte

Apresenta a organização da instrução primária pública para meninas nas escolas de primeiras letras da província do Rio Grande do Norte durante o Império brasileiro. Teve-se como problemática: qual o currículo que fundamentou as práticas pedagógicas voltadas para a aprendizagem das meninas nesse contexto? O objetivo foi analisar o conteúdo instrucional e as expectativas de aprendizagem para meninas previstas nos atos legislativos do Rio Grande do Norte. O período delimitado para o estudo (1822-1889) compreende a formação do Estado nacional brasileiro e a necessária criação de instituições e do ordenamento jurídico para a nova nação que ainda contava com uma sociedade escravocrata e com uma instrução pública que atingia a uma minoria. No âmbito desta apreciação, orientamo-nos pela observação e análise dos dispositivos que nortearam o aparelhamento da escola primária norte-rio-grandense, considerando a natureza e intencionalidade da legislação educacional. A fundamentação pautou-se nas abordagens de Augusto Tavares de Lyra (2008), Luis da Câmara Cascudo (1955), Jacques Le Goff (1994), Leslie Maria José da Silva Rama (1987) e Maria Inês Sucupira Stamatto (1996) e (2012) sobre as percepções de História, legislações do ensino e educação norte-rio-grandense. Verificou-se que a regulamentação do estado indicou diferenciações por gênero na instrução primária, incluindo para as meninas o ensino de prendas domésticas e a limitação do ensino da disciplina Aritmética. O regulamento da criação de cadeiras mistas, para ambos os sexos, somente foi instituído no fim do Império.

Must We Divide History into Periods? by Jacques Le Goff

Book Review| April 01 2018 Must We Divide History into Periods? by Jacques Le Goff Goff, Jacques Le, Must We Divide History into Periods?, trans. DeBevoise, Malcolm (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 176 pp. J. G. A. Pocock J. G. A. Pocock Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2018) 24 (2): 331. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-4362523 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation J. G. A. Pocock; Must We Divide History into Periods? by Jacques Le Goff. Common Knowledge 1 April 2018; 24 (2): 331. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-4362523 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsCommon Knowledge Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2018 by Duke University Press2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

A regulamentação do ensino na Primeira República

Durante o período da Primeira República, muitas foram as transformações políticas, econômicas e sociais vivenciadas pelo Brasil e, consequentemente, pelo estado do Rio Grande do Norte. Neste momento, também a instrução pública sofrerá profundas alterações em sua estrutura, estas têm início a partir das reformas previstas pela Legislação Educacional. Assim, este artigo tem por objetivo analisar a Legislação Educacional para entender a atuação do Estado na construção da cultura escolar através da regulamentação do ensino no período que compreende os anos de 1989 a 1930. Para a realização desta pesquisa, foi adotado o método de análise documental, com base na concepção de documento fornecida por Jacques Le Goff (1990). Para tanto, com relação às fontes históricas, esta pesquisa pauta-se na produção legislativa do estado do Rio Grande do Norte, no tocante à instrução pública. Ao estudar a História da Educação, Stamatto (2012) concebe a importância da legislação enquanto fonte histórica, por estes documentos permitirem a compreensão da implantação e das modificações das políticas educacionais. A legislação se consolida, segundo Thompson (1987), como um importante instrumento de mediação e reforço das relações de classe, ao mesmo tempo em que atua ideologicamente como legitimadora dessas relações. Na legislação encontram-se as pretensões referentes à constituição da própria sociedade e suas instituições, através de uma relação complexa e contraditória. A primeira lei educacional potiguar da era republicana foi sancionada em seis de maio de 1892, daí por diante, muitas foram as intervenções governamentais no ensino que se seguiram. Estes documentos abordavam diversas temáticas, tais como: a hierarquização/organização do ensino; o material didático a ser utilizado; a construção dos edifícios escolares; a higienização; a grade curricular; a inspeção; a criação de Grupos Escolares; dentre outras determinações. Por fim, com base no estudo realizado, pode-se afirmar que o Estado atuou decisivamente na regulamentação da instrução pública, de modo a consolidar a cultura escolar no Rio Grande do Norte, em conformidade com os moldes propostos por Julia (2001).

Da casa à escola: o processo de formação e profissionalização das professoras em Riachuelo/RN (1960-1980)

Este trabalho tem por objetivo compreender o processo de formação pedagógica e profissional de algumas professoras do município de Riachuelo-RN entre as décadas de 1960 a 1980. Nesse sentido aborda a história da educação dentro contexto do interior potiguar, discutindo os elementos da própria educação, aspectos locais e a formação das primeiras salas de aula neste município, assim constituindo o processo da formação da cultura escolar. A metodologia de trabalho utilizada foi à história oral como um método de entrevistas, a técnica de análise de discurso e de análise da memória das professoras pesquisadas e leituras bibliográficas referentes à história da educação. Como fundamentação teórica, trabalhamos com a concepção de História e Memória de Jacques Le Goff, o conceito de Cultura Escolar de Dominique Julia, por abranger um espaço maior dentro da cultura escola, o contexto e o ambiente escolar, e a história oral com José Carlos Meihy, indispensável pelos procedimentos das entrevistas como transcrições, carta de cessão, entre outros. Como resultado inicial dessa pesquisa identificamos dois importantes projetos educacionais para a formação de professores leigos, o Projeto SACI e o Projeto Logos II que atenderam uma grande demanda nesta formação das professoras e se constituíram fundamentais para o este processo. Em relação ao processo de profissionalização das professoras também discutiremos parcialmente o processo de profissionalização.

Portraying Ourselves Observing Others: The French Ethnocolonial Gaze on Sixteenth-Century Floride française (1562-1565)

Between 1562 and 1565, France sent three colonial expeditions to the eastern shores of Florida. Led by Jean Ribaut and René de Laudonnière, the French explored a 65-kilometer expanse along the Atlantic coast, stretching from today's St. Augustine, Florida to Port-Royal, South Carolina. They befriended tribes of Timucuans, set up alliances with them, and established settlements Charlesfort and Fort Caroline. The king appointed professional painter Jacques le Moyne de Morgues to accompany the second expedition and illustrate the experiences of the colonists in Florida. Le Moyne's 42 illustrations, later published as engravings, reflect a unique model of early modern European visual representations of the indigenous Other of the Americas. Le Moyne uses various gazes to portray the French experiences in Florida, the most provocative of which are those depicting members of the French expedition observing the Amerindians engaged in activities related to their lifestyle and social structure, including rituals, ceremonies, and interactions with other tribes. These illustrations reflect an ethnocolonial gaze, which represents a process of French exploration and colonization mediated by extended cross-cultural interactions with the Other. This gaze, which involves both reading alterity and self-reflection, shows the French analyzing elements of local society that might work to their colonial advantage. Le Moyne's innovative ethnocolonial representations of Franco-Amerindian interactions, an extension of an emerging Huguenot hemeneutic of reading alterity, constitute a significant stage in the development of modern ethnographic portrayals of Otherness that French Protestant travel writers, cartographers, and visual artists were developing in the mid-sixteenth century.

Pratiques d’écriture d’un bourgeois de Paris au xvie siècle : deux livres de Jacques Le Gros (Paris, BnF, fr. 12791 ; Berne, BU, MUE Bong VI 221)

The Bibliotheque nationale de France and the University Library of Bern hold two volumes that belonged to Jacques Le Gros, a silk merchant who lived in the heart of Paris in the first half of the 1...

As classes secundárias experimentais: uma tradição escolar (quase) esquecida

The purpose of this article is to make a historiographic reflection on the experimental secondary classes. This analysis is made in three historical moments: first, from the 1950s, when these renovatory essays in Brazilian secondary education emerged and were officialized by the MEC until the 1964 coup; Second, during the military regime; And, finally, in the period of redemocratization of Brazilian society, which began in the 1980s and which is still unfolding today. To do so, he uses the concepts of collective memory, formulated by Jacques Le Goff, and representation, enunciated by Roger Chartier, and uses texts of history of education as scientific articles, books, master's dissertations and doctoral theses.

Diderot in Estonian: In Search of a Dialogue

Denis Diderot’s work has recently been enthusiastically translated into Estonian. Translations of Neveu de Rameau, Jacques le Fataliste, Paradoxe sur le comédien, Lettre sur les aveugles and Lettre sur les sourds et muets have been published from 2003 to 2015. In the 20th century, there was seemingly much less interest for his work. Only a few excerpts from his texts were translated and critical attention rarely focused on him. However, a closer look reveals that Diderot has held a rather important place in several culturally significant debates and that the relatively discreet response to his work reflects some key developments of Estonian literature.

A Staged Encounter: French Meeting Timucua in Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues

A quarter of a century after the destruction of the French settlements in Florida in 1565, there appeared in Frankfurt the second volume of Théodore de Bry’s Great Voyages, the Brevis Narratio of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues that included a series of copperplates depicting the Timucua Native Americans engaged in a variety of everyday activities. Lestringant focuses on plate VIII which depicts the Timucua, in the presence of Laudonnière, prostrating themselves before the column that had been erected three years earlier by Jean Ribault and analyzes the space represented in it as a “theater,” in the sense the word often held in the sixteenth century—that is, a kind of visualization device—linking the world of the Amerindian idolaters and that of the Huguenots.

Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa: Cape of Flows ed. by Mark Fleishman, and: Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space ed. by Megan Lewis and Anton Krueger, and: The Magnet Theatre 'Migration' Plays by Jenny Reznek et al.

Reviewed by: Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa: Cape of Flows ed. by Mark Fleishman, and: Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space ed. by Megan Lewis and Anton Krueger, and: The Magnet Theatre 'Migration' Plays by Jenny Reznek et al. Loren Kruger PERFORMING MIGRANCY AND MOBILITY IN AFRICA: CAPE OF FLOWS. Edited by Mark Fleishman. Studies in International Performance series. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; pp. 236. MAGNET THEATRE: THREE DECADES OF MAKING SPACE. Edited by Megan Lewis and Anton Krueger. Bristol, UK: Intellect Ltd, 2016; pp. 300. THE MAGNET THEATRE 'MIGRATION' PLAYS. Compiled by Jenny Reznek et al. Cape Town, SA: Junkets, 2012; pp. 184. Migrants from Africa attempting to land in Europe have captured the attention of global media, but as Loren Landau and others at the African Center for Migration and Society (ACMS) remind us, most migrants in Africa are on the move to destinations within Africa. Since the end of apartheid more than two decades ago, many have sought a better life in South Africa. Although Johannesburg absorbs more migrants than any other South African city, Cape Town has a longer history of documented settlement—by Khoisan herders, by European colonists hailing from the Low Countries, France, and later Britain, and by slaves from India, as well as Indonesia, from 1660 to 1805—and a distinctive creole culture combining Indonesian, Muslim, Christian, European, and even American elements. In the twenty-first century the Western Cape has housed informal migrants from Senegal, Somalia, Congo, and Zimbabwe, as well as formal emigrants from both the affluent northwestern and the troubled southeastern parts of Europe. In addition to this history of migration to the Cape of Good Hope, the peninsula that marks the confluence of flows from Europe and Asia at the tip of Africa, there is the lesser known phenomenon of internal migration by Xhosa and related groups from the impoverished Eastern Cape to wealthy Cape Town [End Page 122] and back. Inspired by these journeys, Magnet Theatre has created vivid and thoughtful performances that animate the stories of people on the move. All three books under review here, despite the general title of the first one, focus on Magnet's work since the 1990s and are most compelling when they draw on the experience of past and present members of the company, supplemented with articles by people who have worked with or closely observed the company and, especially in the Lewis and Krueger collection, with a rich collection of color and black-and-white images. Magnet Theatre 'Migration' Plays, published by Junkets, a small though vigorous Cape Town press that has built an impressive backlist of new drama, showcases not only four plays, but also Magnet's collective mode of production and distinctive performance method. This method combines company-founder Jenny Reznek's training with the Jacques Le Coq school in thinking, as well as acting, with the body using minimal though carefully chosen props with the research and practice in workshop format developed at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, where cofounder Mark Fleishman worked in the 1980s, while also deploying the stories and skills of more recent Magnet Theatre members. The collection of "migration" plays was compiled by Reznek and Fleishman, collaborating with long-time member Faniswa Yisa and former member Frances Marek, who co-wrote Die Vreemdeling (The Stranger [2010]), and also includes Every Year, Every Day, I am Walking, Magnet's best-known play. Every Year has traveled across Africa and Europe, as well as to Argentina and India. Developed in English and French (with some Xhosa) to speak to its initial audience at a festival in Cameroon in 2006, it is a fine example of Magnet's signature fusion of precise body movement, telling objects, and intellectual clarity. In addition to the central characters—a mother and daughter who flee slaughter in an unnamed central African country and, after several detention centers, land up in Cape Town—Reznek and Yisa played multiple roles as they moved around a metal table that first represented their burnt-up house and later a displacement camp, using props that included shoes that indexed the small feet of a child lost in the fire and the threatening...

Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church by Richard Firth Green

Reviewed by: Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church by Richard Firth Green Carole M. Cusack Green, Richard Firth, Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church ( Middle Ages), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016; cloth; pp. 304; R.R.P. US $55.00, GBP 45.00; ISBN 9780812248432. This engrossing and eminently readable book makes a significant, and original, contribution to scholarship on the medieval Church through its rehabilitation of the lived reality of medieval people with regard to belief in fairy lore. Green thus is able to bring together fields that are usually separated: medieval romance, and attitudes expressed by clerics in the Middle Ages. Elf Queens and Holy Friars joins a myriad recent studies that have enriched knowledge of vernacular beliefs and of 'religion' that existed outside of texts, creeds, and official Church doctrines. The brief 'Introduction' suggests that fairy beliefs were fluid and controversial even in the medieval era, and disavows sundry [End Page 208] ideas that have been floated with reference to such beliefs, including the 'Celtic origins' (p. 5) hypothesis, and the rituals that people performed to draw on fairy power at dangerous times of life. Green's interest is political; his study uses Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault, and traces the 'policing' of fairy beliefs by the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the high Middle Ages. Chapter 1, 'Believing in Fairies', addresses C. S. Lewis's challenge to 'imagine what it would feel like to witness, or think we had witnessed, or merely to believe in' fairies (pp. 11–12). Green details the clerical connections between fairies and demons, and notes the learned middle ground that posited 'neutral angels' (p. 25). He also sketches the less judgemental treatment of fairyland and fairies in literary texts, and rejects the modern view that 'the fairy machinery of medieval romance [… is] a convenient narrative device' (p. 33). Learned writers including Gervase of Tilbury, Walter Map, and William of Newburgh also gave some support to the 'popular' beliefs and practices regarding fairies. Chapter 2, 'Policing Vernacular Belief', demonstrates that the perceived gulf between learned and popular culture in the medieval era does not really work for fairy beliefs. Green summons evidence to show that penalties and penances for fairy beliefs and practices became more severe over the centuries (Burchard of Worms, who died in the early eleventh century, sentenced those who believed in fairy lovers to ten days on bread and water, but the late fifteenth-century Malleus Maleficarum condemned them to death). Green traces a 'campaign of cultural repression' (p. 66) of fairy lore, which, he contends, makes certain of the claims regarding Celtic elements in romances tenable if not provable. Romances were texts in which half-fairies like the magician Merlin existed, and which resisted the official clerical position. Chapter 3, 'Incubi Fairies', opens with an analysis of the various terms for fairies, and explains how clerics consistently express the view that relationships with fairy lovers will end badly, where in vernacular romance 'liaisons with fairy mistresses are invariably exotic and exciting' (p. 101). Chapter 4, 'Christ the Changeling', is especially interesting in that it makes plain how theologically orthodox Christian dogmas might shade into versions of fairy beliefs. Changelings are usually male, and when examined by the learned the beliefs of peasants are generally dismissed, in favour of a 'medical' view. The term for 'changeling', conjoun, appears in diverse contexts (for example, legal texts and romances), and in the Chester and York play cycles, Christ is called a changeling. Green examines all the 'uncanny' terms used for Christ and biblical characters associated with him, such as Abel, and demonstrates that the popular understanding of orthodox doctrine has many connections with fairy beliefs. Chapter 5, 'Living in Fairyland', examines liminal places such as Avalon in the Arthurian legend, and related speculative ideas such as William of Auvergne's consideration of 'whether the fairy horde might be made up of those who had been lost in battle' (p. 158). This segues into a discussion of [End Page 209] the emergence of Purgatory, a term first used around 1170, which begins with Jacques le Goff's account of the subject. Green argues...

Patrimônio Cultural e escrita da história:a hipótese do documento na prática do Iphan nos anos 1980

RESUMO Na década de 1980, técnicos do Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (Iphan) passaram a utilizar argumentos do campo disciplinar da história para justificar a seleção do patrimônio para além dos cânones da excepcionalidade. Mobilizando autores e conceitos da Escola dos Annales, justificavam tombamentos de conjuntos urbanos cujas características não se enquadravam nas narrativas de identidade nacional via colonial praticadas nas primeiras décadas da Instituição. Laguna/SC, Cuiabá/MS, Morro da Conceição e Praça XV de Novembro no Rio de Janeiro, por exemplo, serão preservados não somente pelo valor histórico das suas edificações, mas também pela sua potencialidade como fonte histórica. Elaboram-se, então, argumentos de preservação de bens imóveis que buscavam driblar os conceitos do aporte legal do Decreto-lei no 25/37, buscando proteger sítios e lugares por seu valor documental. O artigo discute as relações entre escrita da história e preservação do patrimônio cultural, tendo como foco o caso de Laguna/SC. Pretende-se compreender de que maneira a proteção legal foi justificada a partir do inédito entendimento da cidade como documento por meio do estudo do processo de tombamento, seus estudos técnicos e as mobilizações teóricas do campo da história social e de autores como Marc Bloch e Jacques Le Goff.

Must We Divide History into Periods?By Jacques Le Goff. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Columbia University Press. 2015. xiv + 160pp. £20.00.

Must We Divide History into Periods?<b>By Jacques Le Goff</b>. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Columbia University Press. 2015. xiv + 160pp. £20.00.

The Pull of the Sacred: All or Nothing

The Pull of the Sacred: All or Nothing Yelena Mazour‐Matusevich Throughout the world, the eternal imitation of the great [French] nation. (Dostoyevsky, Notes on Summer Impressions) In this essay, based on Albert Camus’ insights in his 1950 book The Rebel, I would like to suggest that contemporary Islamist violence, although a new movement in itself, might be the latest expression of a larger historical and anthropological phenomenon going back to the previous century and possibly even before. In The Rebel Camus described this phenomenon as the absolute existential irreconcilability and mutual exclusion between the world of the sacred and the modern secular mindset, which he called the world of rebellion: “Only two possible worlds can exist for the human mind: the sacred and the world of rebellion. The disappearance of one is equivalent to the appearance of the other. There again we rediscover the All or Nothing.” By the world of the sacred Camus understood what Mircea Eliade once identified as the “sacred mode of being,” and medievalists such as Jacques Le Goff and Aron Gurevich, respectively, as “archaic mentality” and “collective consciousness”: a belief‐based mindset shared by a community of people who unconditionally accept certain fundamental values as a matter of faith. More recently, Marcel Gauchet defined it as a “socially imbedded understanding of the universe as sacred order.” The mutually dependent combination of faith‐based and communal aspects is a quintessential and inalienable characteristic of the sacred worldview. Therefore, the fact that ISIS is characterized by the combination of these two aspects proves its belonging to the world of the sacred. Although Camus was neither original nor unique to point at the opposition of the sacred and secular worldviews, a distinction well known to cultural anthropologists, his extreme take on this opposition is his own: he perceived it not only as a conflict, but as The Conflict, the ultimate antagonism of contemporary humanity. As he stated it himself, this was his working hypothesis, “not the only one possible; moreover, it is far from explaining everything. But it partly explains the direction in which our times are leading and almost entirely the excesses of the age.” Camus’ discernments on this topic have not, to my best knowledge, been subject to a public discussion. Even his latest biographer, French philosopher Michel Onfray, who seeks the reestablishment of The Rebel as Camus’ both most significant and most neglected work, leaves this part of Camus’ arguments aside. The reluctance of French intellectuals to include this perspective into the discussion following the 2015 massacres might be due to deeper and more complex reasons than simply political correctness and the traditional post‐colonial discourse, which has become so customary it has evolved into a Pavlov‐like reflex. It might actually be due to what Camus referred to as All or Nothing: the opacity of the sacred mind for those who are deprived of it. For these two mindsets—sacred and secular—are like Janus whose one face is turned to the past, and the other to the future, and whose gazes can never meet. The reason for this tragic lack of communication lies in the fact that while, as André Gide put it, “what we French require most of all is logic,” in the world of the sacred characterized by “a deeper level of social psychology where spontaneous and unconscious mental structures dominate, logic […] has no power.” Therefore, the French refusal to take the sacred cause seriously as the main reason of modern day conflicts might derive from a natural human tendency to reduce the unfamiliar to the familiar. In this case, the familiar is represented by the components of a conflict that are material, quantifiable, accessible to logic and empirical investigation—such as social inequalities, economic development, corruption, poverty, or bad government. However, it is religion and belief systems that are the primary categories of individual and collective identities, and as such they deserve to be investigated without constantly reversing to the Marxist idea of “matter first,” which is concealed behind the tendency of reducing them to economic and social determinants. This is precisely what Camus’ argument in The Rebel aims to achieve: to analyze the very mental attitudes involved and...

Tempo, História e Educação Matemática

Resumo Nesse artigo discutimos como a concepção de “tempo” alterou-se no decorrer da história. Analisamos de que modos tal concepção insere-se na formação do ser social, ou seja, na educação. Indicamos a necessidade de que pesquisas em História da Educação Matemática analisem como o “tempo” tem sido utilizado em Reformas Curriculares e nas práticas docentes. Nossos referenciais são Norbert Elias (1998), Michel Foucault (1993), Jacques Le Goff (1995) e Edward Thompson (1998).

Medieval Wildernesses and King Lear: Heath, Forest, Desert

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the impact of the storm on the heath on Lear is best explained in light of two obsolescent medieval cultural traditions that found positive value in wild nature, in contrast to the negative views common in early modern England. The forest laws help us understand the heath as a place, as well as the monarch’s relationship to that place. But for understanding the inner change in Lear, which is like that of the knight-hermits in medieval romance, we must turn to the cultural roots of the eremitical tradition in monastic spirituality, which, as Jacques Le Goff has argued, were transplanted from the deserts of Egypt to the forests of France and England. These two medieval cultural traditions, transposed into the play’s ancient pagan setting, provide essential help in understanding why a violent storm in a bleak landscape has such a strong presence in Shakespeare’s great tragedy.

Jacques Le Goff's Presence in India: A Very Personal Tribute

AbstractThis paper pays a scholarly and personal tribute to Jacques Le Goff from the perspective of Indian historians. The introduction of the “New History” into India is traced back to its origins, showing the importance it had for the evolution of India's scholarship in history and the personal bonds that were created in course of time between Indian and French historians, with a special focus on Jacques Le Goff.