How do concepts evolve and get reconfigured when they cross national and disciplinary boundaries? As they do, which transformations if any do they undergo? This presentation will address these questions by considering the early diffusion of Gestalt psychology in France in the 1920s and 1930s. Drawing on primary sources (lectures, translations, publications, course offerings), the focus will be on the role played by key mediators: Paul Guillaume, Ignace Meyerson, and Aron Gurwitsch. Their work makes it possible to lay bare the complex interplay between processes of conceptual reproduction, erasure and reconfiguration that take place as concepts move across intellectual and disciplinary scenes.
Image: Áron Gábor: Part and Whole XV. (gaboraaron@yahoo.com)