Practice of Everyday Life 3rd Edition

More than two decades have passed since Chicago published the first volume of this groundbreaking work in the Religion and Postmodernism series. It quickly became influential across a wide range of disciplines and helped to make the tools of poststructuralist thought available to religious studies and theology, especially in the areas of late medieval and early modern mysticism.

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Though the second volume remained in fragments at the time of his death, Michel de Certeau had the foresight to leave his literary executor detailed instructions for its completion, which formed the basis for the present work. Together, both volumes solidify Certeauandrsquo;s place as a touchstone of twentieth-century literature and philosophy, and continue his exploration of the paradoxes of historiography; the construction of social reality through practice, testimony, and belief; the theorization of speech in angelology and glossolalia; and the interplay of prose and poetry in discourses of the ineffable. This book will be of vital interest to scholars in religious studies, theology, philosophy, history, and literature.

In this incisive book, Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

It has been twenty-two years since the Press published the first volume of and#147;The Mystic Fableand#8221; in the Religion and Postmodernism series. The first volume quickly became influential across a wide range of humanistic disciplines and helped to make the tools of poststructuralist thought available to religious studies and theological contexts, especially in the areas of late medieval and early modern mysticism. Volume two has long been anticipated, but it had to wait for Certeauand#8217;s literary executor to gather the fragments after Certeauand#8217;s death, and compile them into a coherent book. Together, both volumes solidify Certeauand#8217;s place in French literary and philosophical circles, and continue his exploration of several interrelated areas, including the paradoxes of historiography, the construction of social reality through practice, testimony, and belief, the theorization of speech in angelology and glossalalia, and the interplay of prose and poetry in discourses of the ineffable. The book will be eagerly read and used by scholars in religious studies, theology, philosophy, history, and literary studies.

Michel de Certeau (1925andndash;86) was a philosopher, historian, and Jesuit. He is the author of The Practice of Everyday Life, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, and The Writing of History, in addition to The Mystic Fable, Volume One and The Possession at Loudun, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Preface

General Introduction

PART I: A VERY ORDINARY CULTURE

I. A Common Place: Ordinary Language

II. Popular Cultures: Ordinary Language

III. Making Do: Uses and Tactics

PART II: THEORIES OF THE ART OF PRACTICE

IV. Foucault and Bourdieu

V. The Arts of Theory

VI. Story Time

PART III: SPATIAL PRACTICES

VII. Walking in the City

VIII. Railway Navigation and Incarceration

IX. Spatial Stories

PART IV: Uses of Language

X. The Scriptural Economy

XI. Quotations of Voices

XII. Reading as Poaching

PART V: WAYS OF BELIEVING

XIII. Believing and Making People Believe

XIV. The Unnamable

Indeterminate

Notes