Emily Eakin's 'The Frenchmen' Revisits French Theory's Legacy

Emily Eakin's new book 'The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory' (Penguin Press) blends memoir, biography, and philosophy primer to explore the lives and ideas of eight French theorists—Lacan, Althusser, Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, and de Man—along with intellectual forebears Sartre and Lévi-Strauss. Eakin, a senior editor at the Times Book Review and former New Yorker editor, recounts her own immersion in theory as a Harvard sophomore and later as a graduate student at the École Normale Supérieure. The book aims to 're-embody' theorists by revealing biographical details: Lacan's flamboyant wardrobe, Deleuze's long fingernails, Foucault's white Jaguar, and de Man's Nazi past. Eakin traces theory's emergence from postwar Paris, the influence of Saussurean linguistics via Roman Jakobson, and the institutional experiences—prisons, asylums, schools—that shaped the thinkers' work. She also addresses the Sokal hoax and Derrida's 2004 obituary in the Times, which she approved but later regretted. The book argues that theory's critical lessons—skepticism, alertness, attention—remain relevant.