Jean-Michel Alain Heimonet

Jean-Michel Heimonet, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, died on March 26 in St. Petersburg, Florida.  Two years ago he relocated there from Colorado, where he and his wife Pascale lived for seven years after his retirement from the University in 2017.  In addition to his beloved wife, he is survived by his daughter Caroline Heimonet and his sister Francoise Heimonet, both of whom reside in France. 

Professor Heimonet was born in Niort, a town near the city of Nantes, France in 1948.  He began his academic studies at the University of Nantes in 1971 and completed them in 1983 with the Doctorat d'Etat from the University of Paris, St. Denis.  When he became a Teaching Assistant at the University of Washington, Seattle, he fulfilled his American dream.  His academic career started at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1984.  He joined Catholic University's Modern Languages Department at the rank of Associate Professor in 1988 and was promoted to Ordinary Professor in 1992.

Professor Heimonet's extensive research attests to his interdisciplinary breadth of interest.  It comprises eleven books, numerous refereed articles, and several introductory essays.  His reflections on the avatars of the sacred in the (post-)modern world began forty years ago with his reading of Tocqueville and the interwar writing of the twentieth-century French thinker, George Bataille. That reading provided a seedbed for a major theme in his scholarship, the correlation of nihilism as an unravelling of the social fabric of democracies and the rise of terrorisms.  Among its most notable fruits are the books entitled De la Révolte à l'exercice: Essai sur l’Hédonisme contemporain (1991) and--reflecting his attachment both to his native and his adopted homelands--Tocqueville et le Devenir de la Démocratie: La Perversion de l'Idéal (2006).  On February 26, 2002 in the foyer of McMahon Hall, the French Cultural Attache bestowed on Professor Heimonet the Palmes Académiques, an order of chivalry awarded for significant contributions to French education, culture, and science.  

While at the University Jean-Michel offered a variety of courses in French literature and cultural theory.  The interdisciplinary scope of his interests is exemplified by the courses that he taught outside of his department: Christianity in a Secular Age, the fourth semester of the Humanities Sequence of the Honors Program, along with David Walsh (Politics) and Joseph Sendry (English), and a course comparing the French and American electoral systems with Dennis Coyle in the Politics Department.   His lectures were distinguished by their meticulous preparation and precise articulation. 

Jean-Michel was cremated in St. Petersburg, Florida.  His memorial will be private. Messages of condolence may be sent to Pascale Heimonet via the Florida Mortuary.