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| L'Homme | |
|---|---|
| Title | L'Homme |
| Category | Literary magazine |
| Founded | 1933 |
| Founder | Jean-Paul Sartre (co-founder), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (co-founder) |
| Country | France |
| Based | Paris |
| Language | French |
| Finalnumber | 12 |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
L'Homme was a Paris-based French literary and philosophical review active in the mid-20th century that brought together existentialist, phenomenological, and Marxist currents. Founded by leading intellectuals, it served as a forum for debates linking literature, philosophy, and politics during a period shaped by the aftermath of the Great Depression, the rise of Fascist Italy, and the approach of World War II. Contributors included prominent figures from across Europe and the Americas who engaged with contemporary issues in aesthetics, anthropology, and social theory.
L'Homme emerged in a milieu dominated by journals such as Les Temps Modernes and Esprit, and intersected with movements associated with Existentialism, Phenomenology, and Marxism. The review positioned itself amid debates involving thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Marx, Hegel, Martin Heidegger, and Antonio Gramsci, while responding to events like the Spanish Civil War and developments in Soviet cultural policy. Its editorial line engaged with anthropology as articulated by figures such as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Bronisław Malinowski, and with psychoanalytic perspectives related to Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.
The journal was established in 1933 by an editorial collective anchored in Paris intellectual circles, with initial backers including professors and activists tied to institutions such as the Collège de France and the Sorbonne. Early issues featured exchanges with international intellectuals from Germany, Italy, Spain, and United States universities, reflecting transnational networks that included guests from the International Institute of Social History and correspondents associated with the New School for Social Research. Publication was intermittent; political tensions stemming from the Popular Front period, censorship pressures related to Vichy developments, and wartime dislocations affected circulation and editorial continuity. The editorial board featured philosophers, anthropologists, and literary critics who rotated responsibilities in response to arrests, exile, and wartime mobilization.
L'Homme published essays, manifestos, and reviews addressing literature, philosophy, anthropology, and political praxis. Recurring themes included human subjectivity as explored by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre, critique of capitalist structures drawing on Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg, and analyses of culture influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl. Literary criticism reviewed works by novelists and poets such as Marcel Proust, André Gide, Albert Camus, Paul Valéry, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, while theater pieces by Bertolt Brecht and essays on film referencing Sergei Eisenstein or Jean Renoir appeared. Anthropological reports engaged with fieldwork methods advocated by Bronisław Malinowski and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, and the periodical carried translations and commentaries on non-Western literatures, referencing scholars like Melville Herskovits and Ruth Benedict.
The review favored rigorous, often polemical prose blending philosophical argument, literary criticism, and ethnographic observation. Contributors ranged from dense phenomenological exegesis influenced by Edmund Husserl to accessible polemics echoing public intellectuals like Victor Hugo in rhetorical ambition. Language oscillated between scholastic registers common in essays from academics affiliated with the École Normale Supérieure and more journalistic tones suited to debates over contemporary politics involving figures like Léon Blum and Charles de Gaulle. Translations reproduced stylistic experiments of modernist writers, engaging formally with stream-of-consciousness techniques associated with William Faulkner and Marcel Proust.
Contemporaries debated L'Homme's stance vigorously; reviews in Les Temps Modernes and citations in international journals such as The New Statesman and Partisan Review testify to its reach. Critics accused it variously of intellectual inconsistency or of being overly politicized, while supporters lauded its role in forging dialogues among Existentialism, anthropology, and Marxist critique. Its influence is traceable in postwar journals and academic programs at institutions including the Université de Paris and the University of Oxford, and in the intellectual trajectories of later thinkers like Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, and Claude Lévi-Strauss who engaged with questions the review foregrounded. Political actors and cultural institutions referenced debates from the review during reconstruction debates in France and in international conferences convened by bodies such as the UNESCO.
Several essays and special issues were translated into English, Spanish, and German for circulation in intellectual hubs like New York City, Buenos Aires, and Berlin. Translated pieces appeared in anthologies published by presses associated with Cambridge University Press, Random House, and small independent houses tied to the anti-fascist and leftist milieu. Later academic reprints appeared in collected works of contributors in series from the Presses Universitaires de France and university presses at Harvard University, Columbia University, and Édition Gallimard. Existing library holdings are cataloged in repositories including the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Library of Congress.
Category:French literary magazines Category:Publications established in 1933