Author: Samuel Buchoul

August 26, 2013

“For without exception the cultural treasures [the historian] surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (Walter Benjamin)…

August 26, 2013

Even though Michel Foucault’s critical readings of health and health institutions have proved infinitely insightful and in turn, inspiring for the updating of these institutions, his enterprise did not only receive praises. One of the most rigorous and thorough critiques came from a budding celebrity, Jacques Derrida, who used to be a student of Foucault…

August 19, 2013

The Enlightenment Century is generally presented as an era of revolutions in science and philosophy in occidental Europe. The Enlightenment’s appeal to reason was then considered as the cornerstone for the conception of the human being and life in societies, which was to be followed during the major social, political and economical developments that would occur in the following centuries…

August 12, 2013

On January 3, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche, an unknown, eccentric and disillusioned German philologist, throws himself on the neck of a horse to save him from being flogged. The philosopher collapses on the ground. Thus started eleven years of dementia; a last phase, a severe and ultimate punishment, for Nietzsche’s already agitated existence…

May 10, 2013

Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Introduction
History and lie. Fifth century B.C. Herodotus is equally known as the ‘Father of History’ and the ‘Father of Lies’. His chronological and causal accounts of the Persian Wars may have marked the beginning of history as a discipline, but it was ignored by none, from his contemporaries to his most postmodern commentators, that Herodotus also included in his records some factually questionable episodes…

May 10, 2013

Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Part 1.1
Ten years after the demise of Edward Saïd, the maverick thinker remains one of the most cited and debated upon intellectual of the past half century. The thought of Saïd, and in particular his 1978 masterpiece, Orientalism, is generally perceived as initiator of what would become one of the most active fields of academic research and in some contexts, of activism: post-colonialism…

May 10, 2013

Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Part 1.2
Edward Saïd’s reflections on the powers of the colonizing West on the rest of the world did not arrive in a vacuum. It had forefathers both in terms of the object of analysis, and in the methods he chose to follow…

May 10, 2013

Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Part 1.3
The sudden prominence of Saïd after Orientalism is only equal in intensity with the number of voices that have criticized his work. Some are precise and question certain specific questions, or methodological assumptions of the work. Others are vaster, if not utterly rejecting the whole of Saïd’s intellectual undertaking…

May 10, 2013

Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Part 2.1
The modern word barbarian integrates both the ideas of the foreign, and of a lower value. Where is it coming form? The Greek βάρβαρος (barbaros) was conceived as antonym to πολίτης (polites), the “citizen” or inhabitant of the city. In Ancient Greece, a complex geopolitical order made of city-states, not belonging to the city meant being outside of the main form of community…

May 10, 2013

Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Section 2.2.1
Father of history, father of lie — but fortunately contemporary commentators do not refer to Herodotus’ name only to highlight the lack of rigor, or even the credulousness of the man. His writing and approach to historical recording was a rather large improvement from the logographers or tellers of tales, and even during his lifetime, this was certainly already realized…even during his lifetime…