Arlette Farge


Arlette Farge is a French historian who specialises in the study of the 18th century, a director of research at the CNRS, attached to the centre for historical research at the EHESS.
Arlette is the youngest of three siblings born into a modest family which came to Charleville because of the needs of the war. After attending the Lycée Hélène Boucher in Paris, she studied to become a :fr:Juge des enfants|juge des enfants, a magistrate specialised in juvenile law, then changed her focus to take an advanced diploma :fr:Diplôme d'études approfondies| in legal and institutional history. With no post available, she left France in 1969 to do her thesis at Cornell University where she bore witness to the activism of African-American students during the Civil Rights Movement and American feminists.
On her return to France, she started to prepare her doctorate in modern history on Le vol d'aliment à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, defended in 1974 under the supervision of Robert Mandrou, a pupil of Lucien Febvre, and the pioneer of the history of mentalities. She then specialised in the study of the poorest communities of the capital. In 2016 she was awarded the Dan David Prize.
With her research team from the , she next worked on the themes of popular identity, gender relations and historical narrative in the 18th century.
After having co-hosted the show ' on France Culture, she regularly collaborates on ', a broadcast from the same radio station.
On his side, Michel Foucault showed her mechanism of power.