Marc Angenot (born

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

, 1941) is a Belgian-Canadian social theorist, historian of ideas and literary critic. He is a professor of French literature at

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, and holder of the

James McGill James McGill (6 October 1744 – 19 December 1813) was a Scottish-born businessman, politician, slaveholder, and philanthropist best known for being the founder of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. He was elected to the Legislative Assembl ...

Chair of Social Discourse Theory there. He is a leading exponent of the sociocritical approach to literature.

Education

He studied at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the

Université libre de Bruxelles The (French language, French, ; lit. Free University of Brussels; abbreviated ULB) is a French-speaking research university in Brussels, Belgium. It has three campuses: the ''Solbosch'' campus (in the City of Brussels and Ixelles), the ''Plain ...

and the

Vrije Universiteit Brussel The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Dutch language, Dutch, ; lit. Free University of Brussels; abbreviated VUB) is a Dutch- and English-speaking research university in Brussels, Belgium. It has four campuses: Brussels Humanities, Science and Engine ...

) from 1959 to 1967. His dissertation on the

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

placed him in the line of

Chaïm Perelman Chaïm Perelman (born Henio (or Henri) Perelman; sometimes referred to mistakenly as Charles Perelman) (20 May 1912 – 22 January 1984) was a Belgian philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin. He was among the most important argumentation theorists ...

, and the Groupe Mu of the

University of Liège The University of Liège (), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium founded in 1817 and based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French (language), French. History The university was foun ...

Social discourse and sociocritique

Along with Claude Duchet, Pierre V. Zima, Jacques Leenhardt, André Belleau,

Jacques Dubois Jacques Dubois ( Latinised as Jacobus Sylvius; 1478 – 14 January 1555) was a French anatomist. Dubois was the first to describe venous valves, although their function was later discovered by William Harvey. He was the brother of Franciscus Sy ...

and Régine Robin, Angenot made use of the sociological approach to texts. His influences were

Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (, ; ; ; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influ ...

, the

Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...

, and

Mikhail Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian people, Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the phi ...

. He favoured the

discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. F ...

concept over the

structuralist Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns tha ...

position on "text", of

Gérard Genette Gérard Genette (; 7 June 1930 – 11 May 2018) was a French literary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and with figures such as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, from whom he adapted the concept of ''b ...

and

Tzvetan Todorov Tzvetan Todorov (; ; ; 1 March 1939 – 7 February 2017) was a Bulgarian- French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist. He was the author of many books and essays, which have had a significant influe ...

. His proposal to study the whole array of "social discourse" in a given state of society (''1889: Un état du discours social'', 1989) was a vast interdisciplinary project concerning the interdiscursive construction of society.

Discursive history

In parallel, Angenot developed "discursive history". Here he examined the grand narratives, but as a

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

, rather than

postmodernist Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...

. He has been concerned with the nineteenth century, and representative thinkers around

revolution In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements ...

and social struggles:

Auguste Comte Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte (; ; 19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857) was a French philosopher, mathematician and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the ...

Saint-Simon Saint-Simon or Saint Simon can refer to: Places Canada *Saint-Simon, New Brunswick, a settlement in Gloucester County, New Brunswick * Saint-Simon, Quebec, a municipality in southwestern Quebec on the Yamaska River in Les Maskoutains Regional Cou ...

Charles Fourier François Marie Charles Fourier (; ; 7 April 1772 – 10 October 1837) was a French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker, and one of the founders of utopian socialism. Some of his views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have be ...

Étienne Cabet Étienne Cabet (; January 1, 1788 – November 9, 1856) was a philosopher and utopian socialist who founded the Icarian movement. Cabet became the most popular socialist advocate of his day, with a special appeal to artisans who were being under ...

Pierre Leroux Pierre Henri Leroux (; 7 April 1797 – 12 April 1871) was a French philosopher and political economy, political economist. He was born at Bercy, now a part of Paris, France, Paris, the son of an artisan. Life His education was interrupted by ...

Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, ; ; 1809 – 19 January 1865) was a French anarchist, socialist, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He was the first person to ca ...

, the Belgian Hippolyte Colins,

Jules Guesde Jules Bazile, known as Jules Guesde (; 11 November 1845 – 28 July 1922) was a French socialist journalist and politician. Guesde was the inspiration for a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter ...

Georges Sorel Georges Eugène Sorel (; ; 2 November 1847 – 29 August 1922) was a French social thinker, political theorist, historian, and later journalist. He has inspired theories and movements grouped under the name of Sorelianism. His social and ...

, and others. His conclusions are on the complexities and breaks within this tradition of discourse.

Rhetoric

Angenot also published a number of books in rhetoric and argumentation, among which ''La Parole pamphlétaire'' in 1982, ''Rhétorique de l'anti-socialisme'' in 2004, and a treatise of "antilogical" rhetoric, ''Dialogues de sourds: Traité de rhétorique antilogique'' in 2008.

Publications

* ''Le Roman populaire. Recherches en paralittérature'', Montréal: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1975. * ''Les Champions des Femmes. Examen du discours sur la supériorité des femmes'', 1400–1800. Montréal : Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1977. * ''La Parole pamphlétaire. Contribution à la typologie des discours modernes''. Paris, Payot, 1982, 416 p. (Prix Biguet 1983 de l'

Académie française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

). * ''Critique de la raison sémiotique. Fragment avec pin up''. Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1985, 134 p. Translated as: ''Critique of Semiotic Reason''. With an Introduction by Marie-Christine Leps. New York, Toronto & Ottawa: Legas, 1994. (Collection « Language, Media, and Education Studies », # 2). * ''Ce que l'on dit des Juifs en 1889''. Préface de Madeleine Rebérioux. Paris, Presses de l'Université de Vincennes, 1989. (Collection « Culture et Société »). * ''Le Cru et le faisandé: sexe, discours social et littérature à la Belle Époque''. Bruxelles: Labor, 1986, 202 p. (Collection « Archives du futur »). * ''Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-neuf: un état du discours social''. Montréal: Éditions du Préambule, 1989, 1,176 p. * ''Le Centenaire de la Révolution''. Paris: La Documentation française, 1989. (Collection «Les Médias et l'Événement») * ''Topographie du socialisme français, 1889–1890''. Montréal: 1991. * ''L'Œuvre poétique du Savon du Congo''. Paris: Éditions des Cendres, 1992. * ''L'Utopie collectiviste. Le Grand récit socialiste sous la Deuxième Internationale''. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993. * ''La Propagande socialiste: six essais d'analyse du discours''. Montréal: Éditions Balzac, 1996. * ''"Un Juif trahira" : l'espionnage militaire dans la propagande antisémitique 1884–1894''. Montréal: CIADEST, 1994. Rpt. Montreal, 2003. * ''Les idéologies du ressentiment''. Essai. Montréal: XYZ Éditeur, 1996. (Prix « Spirale » de l’Essai 1996). * ''La Critique au service de la révolution''. Leuven: Peeters & Paris: Vrin, 2000. * ''La démocratie c'est le mal'', Québec, Presses de l'Université Laval, 2003. * ''Antimilitarisme, idéologie et utopie'', Québec, Presses de l'Université Laval, 2003. * ''Rhétorique de l'anti-socialisme'', Québec, Presses de l'Université Laval, 2004. * ''Le Marxisme dans les Grands récits'', Paris-Québec, L'Harmattan-PUL, 2005. * ''Dialogues de sourds: traité de rhétorique antilogique'', Paris, Mille et une nuits/Fayard, 2008. * ''Vivre dans l'histoire au 20e siècle'', Montréal, Discours social, 2008. * ''Gnose et millénarisme; deux concepts pour le vingtième siècle'', Montréal, Discours social, 2008. * ''En quoi sommes-nous encore pieux'', Presses de l'Université Laval, 2009. * ''L'immunité française envers le fascisme'', Montréal: Discours social, 2009. * ''El discurso social'', Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2010. * ''L'histoire des idées'', Liège: PUL, 2014. * ''Fascisme, totalitarisme, religion séculière: trois concepts pour le 20e siècle.'' Montréal, Discours social, 2014–2015. 4 volumes. * ''O discurso social e as retòricas da incompreensao.'' São Carlos : Edufscar, 2015. * '' Robespierre et l'art du portrait''. Montréal: Discours social, 2016.

Awards and honours

* 1985 – Fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; , SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bilingual council of distinguishe ...

* 1987 – Killam Fellowship (

Canada Council The Canada Council for the Arts (), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporations of Canada, Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It is Canada's public arts funder, with a mandate to ...

) * 1996 – Prix André-Laurendeau * 1996 –

Prix Spirale Eva-Le-Grand Prix was an American power pop band formed in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1975 by Tommy Hoehn and Jon Tiven. The group ended up primarily as a studio project. Its recordings were produced by Tiven along with former Big Star member Chris Bell, who a ...

* 2005 –

Prix Léon-Gérin The Prix Léon-Gérin is an award by the Government of Quebec that is part of the Prix du Québec, which "goes to researchers in one of the social sciences". It is named in honour of Léon Gérin. Winners See also * List of social sciences ...

References

* ''Marc Angenot and the Scandal of History'', special issue of the ''Yale Journal of Criticism'', 2004, Vol. 17, Number 2

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Angenot, Marc 1941 births Living people Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Academic staff of McGill University Writers from Brussels Free University of Brussels (1834–1969) alumni Recipients of the Prix Léon-Gérin