Book Review: Serge Moscovici, Mon après-guerre à Paris. Chronique des années retrouvées (2019)

Andreea Gruev-Vintila; Nikos Kalampalikis

Andreea Gruev-Vintila Laboratoire Parisien de Psychologie Sociale, University Paris-Nanterre, Paris, France
Nikos Kalampalikis Groupe de Recherche en Psychologie Sociale, University Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, France

Keywords: Serge Moscovici, autobiography, social psychology, antisemitism, trauma

Abstract

Mon après-guerre à Paris. Chronique des années retrouvées (My post-war in Paris. Chronicle of the years found) is Serge Moscovici’s second autobiographical volume. It was edited and annotated by philosopher and historian Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, with the support of the Shoah Memorial, and published by the Éditions Grasset thanks to the perseverance of his sons, Denis and Pierre Moscovici. The manuscript was edited in French from handwritten notes in seven or eight languages found posthumously and is illustrated with superb photos from the family's personal archives. It won the “Influences” Ideas Prize 2019. Who is this young foreigner, ‘person-less’ (sans-personne), who arrived in Paris at 22 years old, carrying ‘a legacy of 6 million dead’? How did he transform a traumatic life-course into a legacy of innovation, creativity and change? How did his gaze, coupled with a particular sensitivity that he called his radar, change the trajectory of social psychology, renovate its questions, lead to new scientific paradigms? How does his heritage touch us today, in the European and global context marked by extreme crises and threats? The story is captivating.

Author Biographies

Andreea Gruev-Vintila, Laboratoire Parisien de Psychologie Sociale, University Paris-Nanterre, Paris, France

ANDREEA GRUEV-VINTILA is Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Paris-Nanterre (LAPPS) (France). She conducts research on sense making under extreme circumstances and on the social psychological foundations of power, resistance and violence, using a social representational, trauma informed approach. She is the first social psychologist to win a French national research agency grant to study violent radicalism in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. She co-edited with Adrian Neculau the Romanian edition of Serge Moscovici’s Social Influence and Social Change, published at Polirom (Iasi). E-mail: aernstvi@parisnanterre.fr

Nikos Kalampalikis, Groupe de Recherche en Psychologie Sociale, University Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, France

NIKOS KALAMPALIKIS is Full Professor of Social Psychology at the University Lumière Lyon 2 (UR GRePS) (France). His current work on social representations focusses on symbolic practices of kinship and gift. He edited Serge Moscovici’s last two books in French (Reason and Cultures, 2012; The Scandal of Social Thought, 2013), both published at the Editions of the EHESS. More recently (2019), he edited Serge Moscovici: un regard sur les mondes communs (Serge Moscovici: a look at common worlds) and Serge Moscovici: Psychologie des représentations sociales (Serge Moscovici: Psychology of social representations). E-mail: nikos.kalampalikis@univ-lyon2.fr