Michael Zakim

Michael Zakim is a historian of the modern economy. He studies this subject as at once a cultural and a material event and is particularly interested in the interrelationship between the two.  Zakim teaches history at Tel Aviv University and has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

The project

Title: The Camera's I: The Liberal Invention of Photography

“The Camera’s I” is inspired by a compelling confluence of events that few have noticed: several months after Louis Daguerre first “fixed” the image projected inside a camera obscura, another Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, introduced a new category of political thought to western discourse, “individualism.” These two developments were closely related, if not mutually dependent. The transformation of the individual into an “ism,” or a political philosophy, heralded a revolution in the
human condition, Tocqueville contended. Public life became founded on private prerogative while personal ambition was deemed the key to social progress. How was the ensuing restlessness to be brought under control without undermining the liberty and equality now promised to all citizens? This was the defining predicament of liberal democracy, one which gave birth to photography.

Hosting institution: Université Paris Cité

Selective Bibliography

• Paper: A Global History, forthcoming (in Hebrew).
• “Individualism in America: Alexis de Tocqueville Discovers a New World of Liberal Politics,” Critical Historical Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 2023).
• “Human Capital,” An Introduction to the Hebrew edition of Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Van Leer, 2021) (in Hebrew).
• “The Political Geometry of Statistical Tables,” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 38 (Fall 2018).
• “Importing the Crystal Palace,” American Capitalism: New Histories, Sven Beckert and Christine Desan, eds. (Columbia University Press, 2018).