Sots-art, the mock use of the Soviet ideological clichés of mass culture, originated in Soviet nonconformist art of the early 1970s. An original and provocative guide, Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style examines the conceptual aspect of sots-art, sots-art poetry, and sots-art prose, and discusses where these still-vital intellectual currents may lead.

"E. B. Pashukanis was the most significant contemporary to develop a fresh, new Marxist perspective in post-revolutionary Russia. In 1924 he wrote what is probably his most influential work, The General Theory of Law and Marxism. In the second edition, 1926, he stated that this work was not to be seen as a final product but more for ""self-clarification"" in hopes of adding ""stimulus and material for further discussion."" A third edition was printed in 1927. Pashukanis's ""commodity-exchange"" theory of law (...) spearheaded a perspective that traced the form of law, not to class interests, but to capital logic itself. Until his death, he continued to argue for the ideal of the withering away of the state, law, and the juridic subject. He eventually arrived at a position contrary to Stalin's who, at that time, was attempting to consolidate and strengthen the state apparatus under the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Inevitably, Pashukanis was branded an enemy of the revolution in January 1937. His works were subsequently removed from soviet libraries. In 1954, Pashukanis was ""rehabilitated"" by the Soviets and restored to an acceptable position in the historical development of marxist law. In Europe and North America, a number of legal theorists only rediscovered Pashukanis's work in the late 1970s. They subjected it to careful critical analysis, and realized that he offered an alternative to the traditional Marxist interpretations, which saw law simply and purely as tied to class interests of domination. By the mid-1980s the instrumental Marxist perspective in vogue in Marxist sociology, criminology, politics, and economics gave way, to a significant extent due to Pashukanis's insights, to a more structural Marxist accounting of the relationship of law to economics and other social spheres." --Descripción del editor. (shrink)

В кн. также: Философские афоризмы и изречения В. И. Ленина.

В кн. также: Философские афоризмы и изречения В. И. Ленина.

The author of the work raises the issue of the phenomenon of nomadism in the context of the work of the French director Alain Resnais. The object of the research is the early works of the director, such films as "Last year in Marienbad", "Hiroshima, my love", "I love you, I love". The purpose of the work is to answer the question of how nomadic strategies allow the author to create non-linear narrative structures, oscillating characters and flickering characters in his (...) films, and how understanding these strategies can help viewers and researchers in the act of deciphering works. The author also analyzes a number of phenomena related to nomadism, such as the rhizome, the body without organs, deterritorialization, escape, flicker. The novelty of the research lies in the application of nomadic strategies to the cinema of Alain Resnais. This approach makes it possible to use the current philosophical and art history prism to study narrative structures, intraframe space and characters. The author argues that Rene's cinematography can be viewed through a position of resistance to forms of power - suppression and control - which manifests itself in the violation of traditional forms of narration and the creation of split characters. To study the mentioned aspects of Rene's work, the author resorts to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The author also explains the position of the modern viewer and describes the strategies of looking, which can lead to a state of pleasure from interacting with nomadic works. (shrink)

This article discusses the role of representative strategies in twentieth-century Russian culture. Just as Russia interacted with Europe in the Marquis de Custine’s time via discourse and representation, in the twentieth century Russia re-entered European consciousness by simulating ‘socialism’. In the post-Soviet era, the nation aspired to be admitted to the ‘European house’ by simulating a ‘market economy’, ‘democracy’, and ‘postmodernism’. But in reality Russia remains the same country as before, torn between the reality of its own helplessness and poverty, (...) and the messianic myth of its own greatness. Post-Soviet culture is a product of Stalinist culture. ‘Russian postmodernism’ was created less by artists, writers, poets, and film makers, than by theorists and critics. At the beginning of the 1990s, a need to describe contemporary Russian culture emerged. In this way, ‘Russian postmodernism’ arose from the desire to ‘sell’ projects in the West—from the simple obligation to describe socialist experience in concrete, transferable terms that Westerners could grasp. The nostalgia experienced by the post-Soviet era creates its own simulated postmodernism , in which the matrices of the construction and functioning of culture cease to be connected with specifically Russian (Soviet) history, and instead reproduce Western models almost exactly. We are facing yet another attempt at radical cultural modernization. If the first attempt (revolutionary culture) was the most original and fruitful, and the second (Stalinist culture, Socialist Realism) was less productive but still original, then the third, post-Soviet, attempt (rich in individuality, but lacking in original ideas or style) is for the moment the least productive and original. If we exclude sots-art (conceptualism) from ‘Russian postmodernism’, there would be nothing left. Clearly, an original cultural model in post-Soviet Russia will not take shape until original strategies for processing the country’s cultural past are developed. In their turn, these strategies can only result from a radical transformation of post-Soviet identity into a new, genuinely Russian one. (shrink)

This article discusses the role of representative strategies in twentieth-century Russian culture. Just as Russia interacted with Europe in the Marquis de Custine’s time via discourse and representation, in the twentieth century Russia re-entered European consciousness by simulating ‘socialism’. In the post-Soviet era, the nation aspired to be admitted to the ‘European house’ by simulating a ‘market economy’, ‘democracy’, and ‘postmodernism’. But in reality Russia remains the same country as before, torn between the reality of its own helplessness and poverty, (...) and the messianic myth of its own greatness. Post-Soviet culture is a product of Stalinist culture. ‘Russian postmodernism’ was created less by artists, writers, poets, and film makers, than by theorists and critics. At the beginning of the 1990s, a need to describe contemporary Russian culture emerged. In this way, ‘Russian postmodernism’ arose from the desire to ‘sell’ projects in the West—from the simple obligation to describe socialist experience in concrete, transferable terms that Westerners could grasp. The nostalgia experienced by the post-Soviet era creates its own simulated postmodernism , in which the matrices of the construction and functioning of culture cease to be connected with specifically Russian (Soviet) history, and instead reproduce Western models almost exactly. We are facing yet another attempt at radical cultural modernization. If the first attempt (revolutionary culture) was the most original and fruitful, and the second (Stalinist culture, Socialist Realism) was less productive but still original, then the third, post-Soviet, attempt (rich in individuality, but lacking in original ideas or style) is for the moment the least productive and original. If we exclude sots-art (conceptualism) from ‘Russian postmodernism’, there would be nothing left. Clearly, an original cultural model in post-Soviet Russia will not take shape until original strategies for processing the country’s cultural past are developed. In their turn, these strategies can only result from a radical transformation of post-Soviet identity into a new, genuinely Russian one. (shrink)

The critical remark within the framework of the panel discussion problematizes three provisions of the article proposed for discussion. The first is the dual nature of the concept of “scientific progress”, which is both descriptive and normative. The remark criticizes the descriptive understanding of scientific progress and argues for the adequacy of the description of this concept exclusively in a normative way. The second provision concerns the possibility of accepting “rationality” as a universal criterion for scientific progress. The doubt about (...) the applicability of this criterion to the assessment of the achievements of scientific knowledge in general is asserted and substantiated, at the same time, the application of this criterion to particular sciences seems possible. The third provision is the uniqueness of the historical situation in which science found itself at the end of the XX century, when disciplinary separation becomes an obstacle to the study of complex objects. The uniqueness of this historical situation is disputed, as an alternative view it is argued that the attitude to the phenomenon of specialization of science from the moment of its appearance was ambivalent. Separately, the need to consider the extensive historical experience of creating various epistemological platforms to overcome disciplinary separation is stipulated. A proposal is made to further study and clarification of the possible advantages of French historical epistemology as a platform for the formation of new interdisciplinary areas of research over competing platforms (ANT, STS, strong programme of SSK). (shrink)