THE EVENT OF REVOLUTION

 

This issue continues the topic of “The Discourse of Revolution”, originally framed and presented in NLO No. 26 (1997). The emphasis of issue 64 is
on the intellectual history and philosophy of revolution, rather than the semiotic and cultural aspects which informed issue 26.

 

Igor Dmitriev’s (St. Petersburg State University) article, The Temptation of Saint Copernicus: The Unscientific Structure of Scientific Revolution, is devoted to the sources of Nikolai Copernicus’ “cosmological” revolution. The author argues that Copernicus’ hypothesis attempts to reduce the complexity of the Ptolemaic system, resulting in an innovative, aesthetical and integral worldview. It was new a new scientific outlook and new aesthetic principles, rather than empirical data, which led Copernicus to construct a new
worldview. As a result, Copernicus’ discovery does not fit Thomas Kuhn’s traditional concept of a “scientific revolution.”

 

Kirill Postoutenko’s (University of Southern California) contribution, The Clock and The Locomotive: Essayistic Observations of Time in Revolutionary Culture, elaborates on the dualistic nature of socially constructed time.
For his model, Postoutenko uses various texts from the first half of the
20th century, including futuristic texts by Khlebnikov and the socialist realist novels of Kataev and Babaevskii.

 

The Experience and Concept of Revolution employs hermeneutic and rationalist critical approaches to examine the levels of probability and comprehension
of revolution. Artemy Magun (European University and Smolny College,
St. Petersburg) relates the phenomenon of revolution to the categories of “event” and “negation.” He also gives a short conceptual survey of the notion of revolution, suggesting that the post-1985 events in Russia were an anti-communist democratic revolution.

The section concludes with the poem “Revolution” by Pudja Mittal, a young female poet from New Zealand.

 

LOGIC IN CULTURAL
AND POLITICAL PRACTICIES

 

This section presents material inspired by Claude Levi-Strauss’ structuralism of the 1960s, as well as more contemporary approaches to the “logics of
culture” (V. S. Bibler) and social theory (N. Luhmann, L. Boltanski and
L. ThОvenot).

 

The article by Andrey Smirnov (Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow), On the Logical Intuition of Arab-Muslim Culture, reviews specific semantic concepts of medieval Arab ethical thought. Classical
Aristotelian laws, Smirnov argues, are inapplicable to the correlation of
“intention” and “action.” The author suggests that proper representations of “alien” cultures may be constructed only at what he calls the level of “the logic of meaning,” which presents the external observer and researcher with a complicated epistemological problem.

 

Nikolay Koposov (Smolny College, St. Petersburg) contributes an essay, Logics of Democracy, devoted to the peculiarities of Western culture of
the 18th — 20th centuries. The author suggests major differences between atomistic, nominalistic and universalistic views of the modern world and teleological concepts of sacral hierarchy in the Middle Ages. Koposov examines the problematic relationship between modern European conceptions of
epistemology (from J. S. Mill to J. Lakoff) and theories of democracy. Koposov argues that we need to elaborate a new system of historical and political concepts to address the challenges posed by the globalization processes of the early 21st century.

 

LITERATURE AND TERROR

 

The article by Oleg Budnitsky (Institute of Russian History, Moscow) “Brotherhood of Russian Truth” — S. A. Sokolov-Krechetov’s Last Literary
Project is based primarily on material from Russian, American and British archives about the history of the Brotherhood of Russian Truth organization. This ОmigrО anti-Bolshevik group was, as a matter of fact, a unique literary mystification and the last “literary project” launched by the symbolist poet and publisher S. A. Sokolov-Krechetov.

 

Maria Zavyalova’s (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis) The Doctor Has Prescribed a Phlebotomy: Rhetoric of Violence and Afro-American Literature of the 1960s focuses on the rhetoric and extremist political philosophy of Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon. Zavyalova maintains that both activists
influenced not only the politics of the Black Panther Party, but also the Afro-American literary culture and beyond — from Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. LeRoi Jones) to gangster-rap and Tupak Shakur’s lyrics. The author suggests that after the racial troubles of the 1960s, the nationalist and separatist elements of Afro-American literature developed into a new means of self-identification, becoming at the same time an organic part of the broad-spectrum of American culture.

 

Translations of two short stories by the famous Israeli writer Etgar Keret (Jerusalem) are also published in this section. The stories deal with the
reaction of Israeli society to continuous terror.

 

REVOLUTIONARY DISCOURSE
AS A COMMERCIAL BRAND

 

The writer and literary critic, Andrey Uritsky (Moscow) contributes an article, Revolution Forever, or A Timid Apology of the Market.Uritsky observes and comments on the latest trends in Russian journalism and literature, namely the combination of extreme left revolutionary slogans and extreme right nationalist rhetoric. Uritsky suggests that the framework that allows
to unify these seemingly incompatible tendencies is a form of anti-liberalism shared by left- and right-wing authors.

 

Gasan Guseinov’s (University of Bonn and Radio Deutsche Welle, Bonn) article, The Revolutionary Symbol and Commerce, explores the aesthetic
side of Communism. Recent studies in art history and exhibitions (e.g.
The Communist Dream Factory, Frankfurt, October 2003) tend to perceive Communism not in its socio-political function, but as an aesthetic phenomenon. This approach brackets out the totalitarian aspects of the Soviet system, highlighting a new version of the aesthetics of the “grand style”. This
interesting twist paves the way for a successful commercial use of Soviet
and socialist aesthetics.

 

Dmitry Golynko-Wolfson’s (Institute of the History of Arts, St. Petersburg), Empire of Well-Fed Anarchists (“Right-Wing Thought” and “The Left-Wing Idea” in Contemporary Russian Prose), traces the latest trend in Russian
literature and criticism of incorporating anti-liberal slogans into literary texts. Intellectually fashionable declarations of Imperialism and Anarchism have a symbolic and ritualistic value rather than any real political significance. However, Golynko-Wolfson cautions against this nationalistic, xenophobic, and nihilistic “fashion”, which has a destructive impact on society in general.

 

Sergey Kuznetsov (Moscow), Beyond possessing and appearing:
From Isidor Izu to Malcolm McLaren, Continuing. The well-known writer and journalist analyzes the history of lettrism, situationism, and punk rock, showing how these cultural practices became appropriated in the 1990s by commercial clichОs used in Hollywood (for instance, in the Matrix trilogy).

 

Kuznetsov also publishes his conversation with Malcolm McLaren (London), We All Live in the Karaoke World. McLaren reveals why he launched the Sex Pistols at the end of the 1970s and shares his vision of the present situation in European and American culture.

As an addendum to this section, we print poet and artist Andrey Sen-Senkov’s (Moscow) photographic series Slowly Swallowing the Word.

 

REVISED EXPIRY DATE:
HEURISTICS, HERMENEUTICS, AND IDEOLOGY

 

The rubric opens with Kirill Kobrin’s (“New Literary Observer” and Radio Liberty, Prague) paper, On the History of Dating.The modern procedure of historical dating begins in the middle of the 15th century with Lorenzo Valla’s treatise on the so-called “Constantine’s gift”. The main idea of such a procedure was to verify the document by the very gesture of dating it. The next step in this history was when Cazobon, in his book on Hermetic philosophy and magic, dated the main body of Hermetic writings as works of the 2nd century CE. In the course of the next three centuries, leading up to modern times, the very idea of a date becomes the idea of a context-based reading and
dating texts.

 

Andrey Shchetnikov’s (Novosibirsk) essay, On Dating Some of the Early Prose Works of Velemir Khlebnikov, demonstrates that some of these works have been dated erroneously. Traditionally these manuscripts are dated to 1901—1904, however, according to Shchetnikov they could not have been composed earlier than 1910. This adjustment in dating is based on Khlebnikov’s references to popular scientific literature published only in 1908—1910, as well as his reference to various technical discoveries from the same period.

 

Oleg Proskurin’s (Moscow) article presents new dates for Pushkin’s notes on the margins of Batiushkov’s Essays in Verse. The author associates the notes with their literary context as well as with Pushkin’s works of the time. The article establishes that Pushkin made his notes in August—September of 1823. While in Odessa, Pushkin discussed with Vasilii Tumanskii and Semen Reich the methods of modern Russian poetry. A detailed examination might lead one to consider the notes as an early example of Pushkin’s evolution and his break with the poetic tradition of Zhukovskii and Batiushkov.

 

IN MEMORIAM

 

Texts devoted to the memory of the scholar, critic and translator, Aleksei Matveevich Zverev (1939—2003), as well as a bibliography of his works.

 

ANNIVERSARIES. MISCELLANEOUS

 

The rubric presents articles by Mikhail Bezrodny (Munich) dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Fyodor Tyutchev’s birthday, by Natalia Arlauskaite (Vilnius) on the occasion of Boris Poplavsky’s 100th anniversary, and also a poem and satiric fairytale by Lazar Lagin (1903—1979) prepared for publication by Natalia Lagina (Moscow), the writer’s daughter.

The BIBLIOGRAPHY section contains а review of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “Epistemology of the Closet” (Moscow, 2002) by Oksana Timofeeva, entitled Secrets of an Empty Closet; Sergey Ushakin’s review of the volume “Russian Masculinities in History and Culture” (N.Y., 2002). Ekaterina Dmitrieva, in The Understanding of the Other as Tragic, writes about Vassily Shchukin’s monograph, “Russian Westernization” (Lodz, 2001). Inna Bulkina comments on G. Grabovich’s study, “The History of Ukrainian Literature” (Kiev, 2003). V. Koshelev discusses a book on Griboedov (Moscow, 2003) by E. Tsimbaeva; this is followed by Tatyana Vaiser’s note, Simone Weil: The False Bottom of Metaphysics, explores A. Krogman’s study of Simone Weil (Chelyabinsk, 2003). A number of new books and journals (including the Tolstoy Studies Journal) are also reviewed in this section.

 

 

The ACADEMIC CHRONICLES section contains a report by Igor
Ermachenko entitled War and Peace: On Contacts Between Cultural Contexts, about a conference held at the Vyborg State Museum, on September 1st — 3d, 2003; Alexander Sorochan’s account of the “18th Fet Readings” at Kursk State University (September 29th — October 2nd, 2003). Anton Sveshnikov describes the “5th All-Russian Conference” at Omsk (September 29th —
October 1st, 2003) devoted to culture and the intelligentsia in Russia at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Svetlana Eremeeva’s note closes the rubric with an account of “Harry Potter and the Prisoners of the Philosophical Chamber: the Hierarchy of the Fantastic in Modern Russian Culture”, a conference held at the Russian State University for Humanities, Moscow (October 17—18, 2003).