Background
Didier Eribon was born in Reims.
philosopher sociologist university professor writer
Didier Eribon was born in Reims.
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 interviews 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 United States., at The New School, University of Chicago, Harvard University, Yale University, New York University (New York University), the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, Columbia University 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.
But he returned the prize in May 2011 (see his letter: "I Return the Brudner Prize" on his personal homepage).
"Returning to Reims" has had an impact beyond the field of sociology. French novelist, Édouard Louis cites the book as a "marked a turning point for his future as a writer" Additionally, the book was adapted for the stage by Laurent Hatat, which debuted at the Festival Avignon in July, 2014.