Michel de Certeau
Michel de Certeau was a French historian, philosopher, sociologist, and Jesuit Catholic priest who wrote in the French language throughout his career.
Born on 17 May 1925 in Chambéry, de Certeau received his education at several institutions, including the Saint-Sulpice Seminary, the Catholic University of Lyon, Pierre Mendès-France University, and the École pratique des hautes études. He went on to work as a university teacher and was ordained as a Jesuit priest.
He authored The Practice of Everyday Life in 1980 and The Mystic Fable in 1982. He also received the prix Constant-Dauguet at some point during his career. These works and that recognition represent the documented output and honours recorded against his name.
De Certeau died in the 15th arrondissement of Paris in early January 1986, with sources giving the date as either the 9th or the 10th of that month. He had been born sixty years earlier, in May 1925. The two books he produced in the final years of his life — one published in 1980, the other in 1982 — stand as the principal written works associated with his name.
Quotes by Michel de Certeau
Michel de Certeau's insights on:
One is a socialist because one used to be one, no longer going to demonstrations, attending meetings, sending in one’s dues, in short, without paying.
The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to “turns of phrase” or “stylistic figures.” There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of “turning” phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path.
A memory is only a Prince Charming who stays just long enough to awaken the Sleeping Beauties of our wordless stories.
Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others.
The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere.
The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to "turns of phrase" or "stylistic figures." There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of "turning" phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path.
The only freedom supposed to be left to the masses is that of grazing on the ration of simulacra the system distributes to each individual.
To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.
The created order is everywhere punched and torn open by ellipses, drifts, and leaks of meaning: it is a sieve-order.