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Gaston Bachelard: An Intellectual Biography with Steven Connor

·1 hr 10 min·5 clips
Stephen Connor discusses the first English biography of Gaston Bachelard, an overlooked philosopher whose life was almost lost to tramps.
The episode features an interview with Stephen Connor about his biography of Gaston Bachelard, published by Reaktion Books. Connor explains his route to Bachelard through Michel Serres and the lack of biographical material, partly due to Bachelard's papers being lost when tramps occupied his house. He describes Bachelard's early life as a postman and telegraphist who educated himself, his World War I service, and the death of his wife Jeanne after the war. Connor discusses Bachelard's philosophical trajectory from epistemology to phenomenology and imagination, emphasizing his dual desks for science and poetry. Key themes include Bachelard's opposition to learning through experience, his concept of mesomorphic matter as a midpoint between subject and object, and his influence on artists and architects rather than academic philosophers. Connor contrasts Bachelard with Serres on pedagogy and notes Bachelard's resistance to biography, seeing life as writing. The conversation covers Bachelard's works like Poetics of Space and his elemental books, his views on alchemy and the periodic table, and his legacy as diffuse but enduring. Connor concludes by mentioning his next project on the absurdity of universities.

As heard by us

Bachelard's biography becomes a study of knowledge as inward struggle, with the university waiting at the edge of the argument.

Gaston Bachelard's unease with biography gives this Hermetics Podcast conversation its real pressure. The host speaks with Stephen Connor, whose 2025 book Gaston Bachelard, An Intellectual Biography is presented as the first English biography of Bachelard, and the discussion…

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For a biography that turns knowledge into a quarrel with the self, press play.

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