After devoting his doctoral thesis (1983) to the
Annales School, Dosse turned his research interests to
structuralism, the philosopher
Paul Ricœur (his biography, Paul Ricœur. Les sens d'une vie (published in 1997), has become the standard authority) and the historian
Michel de Certeau. François Dosse is one of the founders of the journal EspacesTemps. In 2007, he published Gilles Deleuze et
Félix Guattari, biographie croisée (English trans. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives [2010]), where he advocated the rehabilitation of Guattari in an intellectual history that had made place only for Deleuze.[3] In 2011 he published a biography on the French historian
Pierre Nora and in 2014 on the Greek-French philosopher
Cornelius Castoriadis.
Dosse is Professor of Contemporary History at the Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres at
Créteil.[4]
Publications
L'Histoire en miettes. Des "Annales" à la "nouvelle histoire", Paris,
La Découverte, 1987 (2nd edition : Presses Pocket, "Agora", 1997).
Histoire du structuralisme. Tome 1 : Le champ du signe, Paris, La Découverte, 1991. [English translation: "History of Structuralism; The Rising Sign 1945-1966"]
Histoire du structuralisme. Tome 2 : Le chant du cygne, Paris, La Découverte, 1992. [English translation: "History of Structuralism; The Sign Sets 1967-Present"]
L'Instant éclaté. Entretien avec
Pierre Chaunu, Paris, Aubier, 1994.
L'Empire du sens. L'humanisation des sciences humaines, Paris, La Découverte, 1995.
Paul Ricœur. Les sens d'une vie, Paris, La Découverte, 1997.