Michel de Certeau

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 across 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.