Pierre Vidal-Naquet participated with Michel Foucault and Jean-Marie Domenach in the founding of the Groupe d'information sur les prisons, which was one of the first French new social movements.
22 Facts About Pierre Vidal-Naquet
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet was part of debates over historiography in which he criticised negationism, and he was a supporter of Middle East peace efforts.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet's family belonged to the Sephardic Jewish community rooted in the Comtat Venaissin.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet was born in Paris, and he was raised in a bourgeois, republican and secular environment.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet's father Lucien was a lawyer, of "Dreyfusard" temperament, who quickly entered the Resistance in order to avoid exile.
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At 14 years old, Pierre Vidal-Naquet then hid in his grandmother's house in the Drome.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet later learnt that the Nazis had made "his father dance," something he would never forget.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet read Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat, a book attempting to explain the causes of the defeat during the 1940 Battle of France, which is one of the origins of his vocation as a historian.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet discovered surrealism, and founded a review at 18 years old, along with Pierre Nora, Imprudence.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet first taught history at Orleans's high school, before going to then University of Caen and then Lille.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet then worked at the CNRS and was named maitre de conferences at the University of Lyon.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet was then named professor at the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes, which became the EHESS.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet was married and the father of three children.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet was officer of the Legion d'honneur and, in Greece, commander of the Phenix Order.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet defined himself as an "activist historian", and while pursuing his studies never ceased engaging in political struggles and taking part in political committees, etc.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet was opposed to the Regime of the Colonels in Greece.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet supported peace efforts in the Middle East as well as the Europalestine group.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet was active in condemning denial of the Armenian genocide.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who had answered or criticized Holocaust negationist Robert Faurisson in several of his works, once employed Faurisson as an example to illustrate "what the Armenian minorities might feel":.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet was one of the first scholars to deconstruct historical revisionism, notably in The Assassins of Memory and Reflexions on Genocide.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet was opposed to the 23 February 2005 French law on colonialism passed by the conservative Union for a Popular Movement, but which was finally repealed by president Jacques Chirac in the beginning of 2006.
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Pierre Vidal-Naquet criticized the 1990 Gayssot Act which prohibits revisionist discourse, claiming that the law shouldn't interfere in historical matters.