Sandro Landi
Sandro Landi is a historian of the political culture of early modern Italy (16th-18th century) specializing in censorship, public opinion and political discourse. After receiving his doctorate from European University Institute (EUI) in 1995, he became associate professor at University Michel de Montaigne of Bordeaux and researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Marseille. In 2005 he obtained his “Habilitation à diriger des recherches” (HDR) from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and thus he became professor of modern history at University of Bordeaux. His dissertation and subsequent book (Il governo delle opinioni. Censura e formazione del consenso nella Toscana del Settecento, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2000), in opposition to Habermasian’s paradigm of the public sphere, deals with the constitutive role of censorship in the formation of public opinion in eighteenth century Tuscany, under Lorraine rule. In a long-term perspective, He studied the emergence of the public opinion in the Italian political discourse between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, particularly emphasising Machiavelli’s analysis of the concept of ‘doxa’ (Naissance de l’opinion publique dans l’Italie moderne. Sagesse de peuple et savoir de gouvernement de Machiavel aux Lumières, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006). In collaboration with Jean Boutier and Olivier Rouchon he edited a political history of early modern Tuscany (Florence et la Toscane XIVe-XIXe siècles. Dynamiques d’un Etat italien, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004). On this subjects he published many articles, a paperback (Stampa, censura, opinione pubblica in età moderna, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2011) and, recently, a study dealing with these topics through Machiavelli’s point of view (Lo sguardo di Machiavelli. Una nuova storia intellettuale, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2017). Between 2011 and 2020, Sandro Landi was director of the "Montaigne Humanités" doctoral school and, from 2021, he is director of the CNRS Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Bordeaux.
less
InterestsView All (21)
Uploads
Books by Sandro Landi
la création au XIXe siècle d’un État unitaire. Qu’en est-il, cependant,
lorsqu’on coupe le film avant l’Unité ? Que devient l’histoire de l’Italie
lorsque, s’arrêtant dès 1815, on fait abstraction d’une suite qui nous
est désormais connue, mais ne l’était pas des contemporains ? Le récit
national, alors, n’a plus lieu d’être, et le postulat d’une Italie perd de
sa légitimité. Du XIIe au début du XIXe siècle, c’est tout autant d’Italies,
à la fois proches et diverses, dont on peut parler. Au fil de trentequatre
chapitres thématiques, ce livre explore ces Italies d’avant l’Italie.
Écartant tout récit qu’aimanterait une fin nécessaire, il invite le lecteur
à une promenade entre des histoires distinctes, mais souvent enchevêtrées,
survenant dans des espaces tantôt centrés sur la Péninsule,
tantôt resserrés dans les limites d’un simple village ou dans les murs
d’une orgueilleuse cité, tantôt dilatés à la mesure des mers, des empires
ou de l’universelle romanité.
Originating from the consideration that Machiavelli constitutes an historical case not yet fully explored, this original study puts forward new questions regarding the works of the Florentine secretary with a series of unpublished approaches to his archives, his knowledge of the New World and his way of conceiving understanding intellectual practises such as reading and writing.
Lo sguardo che Machiavelli porta sulla realtà gli consente di vedere cose che i suoi contemporanei non vedono, come la natura e il comportamento dei collettivi, il carattere mentale del vincolo politico e religioso o l’importanza dell’opinione nel governo degli stati.
Nato dalla constatazione che Machiavelli costituisce un caso storico non ancora pienamente esplorato, questo originale studio pone domande nuove all’opera del segretario fiorentino, aprendo una serie di piste inedite sulle sue fonti, sulle sue conoscenze del Nuovo Mondo, sul suo modo di concepire pratiche intellettuali come la lettura e la scrittura.
Papers by Sandro Landi
This paper addresses the debate on the origins of populism by proposing a new chronology. The hypothesis is that populism is a phenomenon of political enchantment made possible by the transformation that the notions of “enchantment” and “enchanter” underwent, for the first time, during the sixteenth century. The signs of this transformation are identified by
three political observers: Machiavelli, Pomponazzi and La Boétie. Starting from the image of the tyrant as a great charmeur in La Boétie, the paper proposes to read the notion of “voluntary servitude” as a form of collective
enchantment. La Boétie confers on enchantment a political value and identifies in the enchanter/enchanted relationship the key to an unprecedented subordination pact. On this variation of scale, enchantment as a political phenomenon occurs when the leader is the repository of
the charisma to perform prodigies deemed credible by the multitude.
The cancel culture has so far rarely been the subject of study by historians of
censorship. From a historical-psychological perspective, this article proposes to study the cancellation culture in the light of the notion of "post-traumatic growth", used in the past to explain the reforming behaviour of early Christian communities. The hypothesis developed is that trauma confers on subaltern communities the authority to inhibit the existence of objects or authors in the public space.
This paper addresses the debate on the origins of populism by proposing a new chronology of this phenomenon. The hypothesis developed here is that populism is a phenomenon of enchantment of politics made possible by the transformation that the notions of «enchantment» and «enchanter» underwent, for the first time, during the sixteenth century. The signs of this transformation are identified, almost simultaneously, by three political observers: Machiavelli, Pomponazzi and La Boétie. Starting from the image of the tyrant as a great «charmeur» at the beginning of La Boétie’s treatise, the article proposes to read the notion of «voluntary servitude» as a form of collective enchantment. The different contexts that this enigmatic image allows us to identify indicate that the Discours de la servitude volontaire is inscribed, in an original way, in the long tradition of the therapeutic power of enchantments. By recognising in the tyrant the qualities of the enchanter, La Boétie gives the incantation a political value and identifies in the relationship enchanter/enchanted the key to an unprecedented pact of subordination. In this variation of scale, enchantment as a political phenomenon occurs when the leader is the depositary of the charisma to perform prodigies considered credible by the multitude. This reconstruction assigns a central role to the figure of the prophet-thaumaturge in which elements are interwoven that refer as much to figures and practices of popular medicine («ciurmatori») as to academic debates on the healing power of the imagination. The article illustrates how this hybrid model of leadership is clearly identified by Machiavelli and Pomponazzi. The article concludes by proposing to read the populist model as a «democratisation» of the thaumaturgical paradigm described by Marc Bloch in Les rois thaumaturges (1924). The people preferentially tend to grant the trust of healing to individuals who share their fears, beliefs and hopes: anyone who proves to possess the charisma to enchant (and to heal) can become ruler of multitudes.
la création au XIXe siècle d’un État unitaire. Qu’en est-il, cependant,
lorsqu’on coupe le film avant l’Unité ? Que devient l’histoire de l’Italie
lorsque, s’arrêtant dès 1815, on fait abstraction d’une suite qui nous
est désormais connue, mais ne l’était pas des contemporains ? Le récit
national, alors, n’a plus lieu d’être, et le postulat d’une Italie perd de
sa légitimité. Du XIIe au début du XIXe siècle, c’est tout autant d’Italies,
à la fois proches et diverses, dont on peut parler. Au fil de trentequatre
chapitres thématiques, ce livre explore ces Italies d’avant l’Italie.
Écartant tout récit qu’aimanterait une fin nécessaire, il invite le lecteur
à une promenade entre des histoires distinctes, mais souvent enchevêtrées,
survenant dans des espaces tantôt centrés sur la Péninsule,
tantôt resserrés dans les limites d’un simple village ou dans les murs
d’une orgueilleuse cité, tantôt dilatés à la mesure des mers, des empires
ou de l’universelle romanité.
Originating from the consideration that Machiavelli constitutes an historical case not yet fully explored, this original study puts forward new questions regarding the works of the Florentine secretary with a series of unpublished approaches to his archives, his knowledge of the New World and his way of conceiving understanding intellectual practises such as reading and writing.
Lo sguardo che Machiavelli porta sulla realtà gli consente di vedere cose che i suoi contemporanei non vedono, come la natura e il comportamento dei collettivi, il carattere mentale del vincolo politico e religioso o l’importanza dell’opinione nel governo degli stati.
Nato dalla constatazione che Machiavelli costituisce un caso storico non ancora pienamente esplorato, questo originale studio pone domande nuove all’opera del segretario fiorentino, aprendo una serie di piste inedite sulle sue fonti, sulle sue conoscenze del Nuovo Mondo, sul suo modo di concepire pratiche intellettuali come la lettura e la scrittura.
This paper addresses the debate on the origins of populism by proposing a new chronology. The hypothesis is that populism is a phenomenon of political enchantment made possible by the transformation that the notions of “enchantment” and “enchanter” underwent, for the first time, during the sixteenth century. The signs of this transformation are identified by
three political observers: Machiavelli, Pomponazzi and La Boétie. Starting from the image of the tyrant as a great charmeur in La Boétie, the paper proposes to read the notion of “voluntary servitude” as a form of collective
enchantment. La Boétie confers on enchantment a political value and identifies in the enchanter/enchanted relationship the key to an unprecedented subordination pact. On this variation of scale, enchantment as a political phenomenon occurs when the leader is the repository of
the charisma to perform prodigies deemed credible by the multitude.
The cancel culture has so far rarely been the subject of study by historians of
censorship. From a historical-psychological perspective, this article proposes to study the cancellation culture in the light of the notion of "post-traumatic growth", used in the past to explain the reforming behaviour of early Christian communities. The hypothesis developed is that trauma confers on subaltern communities the authority to inhibit the existence of objects or authors in the public space.
This paper addresses the debate on the origins of populism by proposing a new chronology of this phenomenon. The hypothesis developed here is that populism is a phenomenon of enchantment of politics made possible by the transformation that the notions of «enchantment» and «enchanter» underwent, for the first time, during the sixteenth century. The signs of this transformation are identified, almost simultaneously, by three political observers: Machiavelli, Pomponazzi and La Boétie. Starting from the image of the tyrant as a great «charmeur» at the beginning of La Boétie’s treatise, the article proposes to read the notion of «voluntary servitude» as a form of collective enchantment. The different contexts that this enigmatic image allows us to identify indicate that the Discours de la servitude volontaire is inscribed, in an original way, in the long tradition of the therapeutic power of enchantments. By recognising in the tyrant the qualities of the enchanter, La Boétie gives the incantation a political value and identifies in the relationship enchanter/enchanted the key to an unprecedented pact of subordination. In this variation of scale, enchantment as a political phenomenon occurs when the leader is the depositary of the charisma to perform prodigies considered credible by the multitude. This reconstruction assigns a central role to the figure of the prophet-thaumaturge in which elements are interwoven that refer as much to figures and practices of popular medicine («ciurmatori») as to academic debates on the healing power of the imagination. The article illustrates how this hybrid model of leadership is clearly identified by Machiavelli and Pomponazzi. The article concludes by proposing to read the populist model as a «democratisation» of the thaumaturgical paradigm described by Marc Bloch in Les rois thaumaturges (1924). The people preferentially tend to grant the trust of healing to individuals who share their fears, beliefs and hopes: anyone who proves to possess the charisma to enchant (and to heal) can become ruler of multitudes.
This paper proposes a new interpretation of Etienne de La Boétie’s Discours de la servitude volontaire. Starting from the image of voluntary servitude as a collective enchantment that appears at the beginning of the treatise, the paper explores the transformation that the notion of enchanter undergoes in the early 16th century. The different contexts that this image allows us to identify, indicate that the Discours is inscribed, in an original way, in the long medical tradition on the power of enchantments. By recognising in the «One» the qualities of the enchanter, La Boétie gives the enchantment a political value and identifies in the relationship enchanter/enchanted the key to an unprecedented pact of subordination. In this variation of scale, the enchantment as a political phenomenon occurs when the leader proves capable of performing credible prodigies. This reconstruction accords a central role to the figure of the thaumaturge leader, whose characteristics are defined by Machiavelli and Pomponazzi. In a reading history perspective, the article explores the relationship La Boétie establishes with Machiavelli and Pomponazzi. The article concludes with a comparison between the thaumaturgical paradigm and the charismatic paradigm,Marc Bloch and Max Weber
sciences sociales, l’hypothèse développée est que la découverte de la dimension psychique de la multitude au début du XVIe siècle constitue un tournant épistémique qui permet de repenser la chronologie de la foule comme objet d’étude et de gouvernement.
This article focuses on the «multitude», a key term today in Machiavelli’s operaistic and populist interpretations. Through the study of the lexicon of authors belonging to the Aristotelian and Thomistic tradition, this article highlights the substantial ambiguity of this term and collective subject. The analysis that Machiavelli devotes in particular to the multitude as a «loose» component of the political body, reveals
significant analogies with the contemporary reflection of Pietro Pomponazzi (De incantationibus). From a social science history perspective, the hypothesis developed is that the discovery of the psychic dimension of the multitude at the beginning of the 16th century constitutes an epistemic turning point that makes it possible to rethink
the chronology of the crowd as an object of study and government.
and writing by Machiavelli: that of religion as experience or, more precisely, as a nucleus of shared experiences, in a given historical time and space, by a community or a collective. The aim is tocontribute to the definition of a phenomenology of belief in Machiavelli.
Machiavelli’s interest in political and social
conflicts and some ethnographical sources
concerning the contemporary discovery of
cannibals in the Caribbean as well as in Brazil
(Tupinamba). The hypothesis is that
knowledge of these sources represents a filter
that allowed Machiavelli to reinterpret social
clashes notably in Florentine urban context.
This seminar focuses on the "multitude", a key term today in Machiavelli's operaistic and populist interpretations. Through the study of the lexicon of authors belonging to the Aristotelian and Thomistic tradition, this article highlights the substantial ambiguity of this term and collective subject. The analysis that Machiavelli devotes in particular to the multitude as a "loose" component of the political body, reveals significant analogies with the contemporary reflection of Pietro Pomponazzi (De incantationibus). From a social science history perspective, the hypothesis developed is that the discovery of the psychic dimension of the multitude at the beginning of the 16th century constitutes an epistemic turning point that makes it possible to rethink the chronology of the crowd as an object of study and government.