On Symbolism and Symbolisation

In On Symbolism and Symbolisation, Éric Smadja returns to the end of the nineteenth century and explores how the concepts of symbolism and symbolisation have been discussed among theorists, and how this has revolutionised the human sciences. Uniquely, he connects three key thinkers of psychoanalysis, sociology and ethnology – Freud, Durkheim and Mauss - and discusses how their diverse epistemological paths blend, and have consequently shaped our representation of humanity, society, and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.