[Discussion] Summary: NLO (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie) No. 001, 2005

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

From: "Serguei Alex. Oushakine" <sao15@columbia.edu>

Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie,  No. 001, 2005

SUMMARY

The section "The Poetics and Rhetoric of Sociology" is represented by Sergey
Kozlov 's (Institute of Higher Researches in Humanities, RSUH, Moscow) 
article
"The Crash of a Train: Max Weber's Transport Metaphor". In this article the
concept of railroad movement (fraught with potential catastrophy) is 
seen as a
basic metaphor of Weber's sociology. The article treats railroad images, 
motives
and symbols in biographical mode, as childhood impressions and images, 
as well
as illustrations of the principles of purposeful social movement. Kozlov 
tries
to reassess the idea of "basic metaphor" introduced by the American 
philosopher
Stephen Pepper, later used by Heiden White, in order to recreate the 
coneptual
intruments of sociological theory and political thinking of Max Weber. The
railroad metaphor is most productive in analyzing the themes of choice and
rational counting of consequences, with the author turning to the 
philosophy of
law widely used in Weber's sociology.

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION OF BODY: THE FIGURES OF THE CORPOREAL

This section continues the analysis of body and the corporeal started by 
the New
Literary Review in the middle of the 1990s (in the genre of 
body-studies) and
carried on with a cultural-philosophical angle in issues 65 and 69. The 
article
"Mapping the Body: The History of Body Between Constructivism, Politics, and
Experience" written by a historian Philipp Sarasin (University of Zurich,
Switzerland) comes first and is devoted to the historical thematization 
of the
corporeal, mainly new-European. The corporeal, as the author argues, 
cannot be
reduced to discoursive strategies or the chaos of incompatible 
singularities, in
Michel Foucault's manner. The author sees the corporeal as a historical
projection not as a significant construction or natural phenomenon, but as a
special correlation and intersection of discursive and material orders.

Oksana Timofeeva (Institute of Philosophy, Moscow) in her article "Text 
as the
Embodiment of Flesh: on the Morphology of G. Bataille's Experience" 
views the
original concept of flesh as central point of Batai's philosophy, both 
pre- and
anti-theoretical one. Overcoming the traditional philosophical idealism and
creativity in the way of "base materialism" turns out to be possible, as 
Batai
sees it, in turning to the aesthetics of surrealism and economics of
unproductive expenditure ("The Cursed Lot"). The author pays special 
attention
to Bataille's reasessment of the basic psychoanalytical motives and 
philosophy
of Freud and Lacan.


Andrey Astvatsaturov 's (Siriolny College and State University of
Saint-Petersburg) ""Thinking Body" in the Search for a Language. The Case of
Henry Miller" is devoted to interpreting and reassessing the body and the
concept of the corporeal in Henry Miller's fiction and essays. The 
author also
analizes Miller's avantguard aesthetic ideas, when the latter tried to 
rethink
the concepts of education, the destination of literature, and the basic
principles of European "intellectualist tradition" in general, in terms 
of the
primacy of flesh.

Last but not least, Ilya Kalinin (The Neprikosnovenny Zapas magazine, 
Moscow) in
his article "History as the Art of the Articulation" discusses the place and
meaning of bodily metaphors in scientific and fictional writing of Russian
formalists in great detail. In terms of representing the personal and 
historic
experience of formalists themselves abundant bodily metaphors play a far 
greater
part than just illustrating things, according to Kalinin. As the author 
argues,
history leaves notes on the bodies of its characters and creators, as 
well as on
the body of the watching historian himself (i.e. formalists themselves). 
The key
formalist notions of fragmentarity, decomposing and destruction are 
rethought by
the author in comparison with Walter Benjamin's concepts which are close to
these (the idea of allegory, ruins, etc.).

THE STRUGGLE FOR LITERARY REPUTATION: GENRES AND CHARACTERS

Ilya Vinitsky (University of Pennsylvania). ""Dead Poets Society": 
Mediumistic
Poetry as a Cultural Phenomenon of the Second Half of the Nineteenth 
Century".
The author examines the phenomenon of posthumous authorship (i.e. 
literary texts
produced during mediusmistic seances) that had emerged in the early 1850s in
America and conquered Europe by the mid-50s. According to the spiritualists
beliefs, each mediumistic poem was considered as the final word of the 
author, a
summa summarum of his/her literary and human experience. Vinitsky argues 
that
literary works by spirits generate a paradoxical genre resting on the 
boundary
between literature and folklore, faith and science, forgery and myth. In the
words of Yuri Lotman, the deciphering of these unreliable texts might 
become an
important source of our knowledge concerning the literary mythology and 
cultural
consciousness of the second half of the 19th century, - a period of the 
booming
literary market and the flourishing of ideological criticism. In this 
context,
the Russian mediumistic works should attract special attention for they 
may be
considered one of the utmost expressions of the notorious 
quasi-religious cult
of literature and literati (especially the departed ones) that had 
emerged by
the end of the 19th century.

Victor Zhivov (University of California, Berkeley) "Herzen's Apology in
Phenomenological Guise ("Herzen's Philosophical Weltanschauung' by G.G. 
Spet)"
After the Bolshevik revolution, Russian intelligentsia had to construct 
a new
intellectual space to justify its existence. A reappraisal of Russian 
spiritual
and intellectual traditions was part of this task. Alexander Herzen could be
regarded as a crucial figure in this process. Whereas Bolshevik authors 
claimed
him to be their predecessor, non-revolutionary intelligentsia tried to
appropriate him as a champion of freedom and individualism. The paper 
analyzes
strategies of this appropriation used by Gustav Spet in a book about 
Herzen's
philosophical development published in 1921.

"Correspondence of A.D. Siniavskii With the Editors of the Series 
"Biblioteka
poeta": Transformations of the Soviet Literary Field", with the comments and
foreword by Anna Komaromi (University of Toronto). This correspondence, 
found in
the Siniavskii archive at Hoover Institution, spans the years 1962 - 
1965 and
relates to Siniavskii's introductory article for the 1965 'Biblioteka poeta'
edition of Pasternak's poetry. The foreword treats the substance and 
method of
Siniavskii's disagreements with the editors. Examined in conjunction 
with the
Pasternak Affair and Trial of Siniavskii and Daniel, Siniavskii's 
recalcitrance
can be considered an illustration of the emergence of an autonomous Soviet
literary field, conceived according to Pierre Bourdieu's description.

Olga Panova (Moscow State University). "Rimbaud and Simulacre"; 
Dominique Noguez
"The Three Rimbauds" (Paris, Edition de Minuit, 1986). Dominique 
Noguez's book
is a brilliant philological "romance" describing Rimbaud's afterlife. 
According
to Noguez, Rimbaud didn't die in 1891, but lived until 1937, and having 
returned
to Paris from Ethiopia in 1893, published several prosaic works such as 
"African
Nights", "Black Gospels", "The System of Modern Life", became a Member of
Academie Francaise and was recognized a modern classic. He married Paul
Claudel's sister Louise, exchanged letters with T. Mann and F. Pessoa, and
ambivalent relations with surrealists and futurists and finally after his
conversion to Catholicism came back to his native Charleville and ended 
his life
as a provincial bourgeois that lost all the illusions of his rebellious 
youth.
Noguez's book is parodying modern literary criticism that can create and 
kill
poets, re-make their biographies and deconstruct their work, offer 
simulacres
instead of real things.

The "resurrected Rimbaud" without his shocking and enigmatic persona, his
visionary prophetic poetic poetry becomes an average French intellectual 
of the
early XX century, a poor copy of Paul Valery or Andre Gide. Rimbaud 
invented by
Noguez helps make evident all latent sides of the adolescent poet's 
character
and make reality the main myths such as "Rimbaud - angelic catholic poet",
"Rimbaud - positivist and socialist", "Rimbaud - bougeois", etc. All these
images of Rimbaud stop being hypotheses and versions and get a life of 
their own
giving rise to a simulacre that replaces the true figure of Rimbaud, "enfant
terrible" of the French poetry.

MODERNIZATION AS MOBILIZATION: THE SOVIET CULTURE OF THE 1930s

Joachim Klein (Leiden University, Netherlands). "Belomorkanal. 
Literature and
Propaganda in Stalin's Times". This article deals with the cultural 
history of
early Stalinism, focussing on the extensive propaganda campaign around the
construction of the White Sea - Baltic Canal in the early 1930ies. This 
campaign
was so successful that for decades to come this project was largely 
associated
not with the existence of a huge concentration camp, the Belbaltlag, but 
with
the glamour of heroic achievement. How can the sucess of this propaganda
campaign be explained? And what induced the elite of Soviet writers to
participate in it?

Serguei Oushakine (Columbia University, New York). ""Let's Fight 
Nature": How We
Tried to Get Rid of Heredity". Using classical texts of the early 
Stalinism (M.
Gorky's journalism, T. Lysenko's agrobiological work, and A. Makarenko's
pedagogical writing) as its main source, the essay explores how persistent
design and implementation of endless chains of disciplining routines and
activities were used in the 1920 - 1930s to overcome the dissolution of the
daily order of things. Uncertainty of social norms in the early Soviet 
society
became equated with instability of environment in general and nature in
particular. Such an equation produced an interesting discursive and 
practical
shift: an absence of clearly articulated models of subjectivity was 
overcome and
overshadowed by a very powerful and vivid rhetoric of various techniques 
through
which a controlled environment of culture - a "second nature" in Gorky's 
word -
could be created.

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL IN THE ERA OF THE CRISIS OF THE NATIONAL UTOPIAS

The article by Alexandra Bobrakov-Timoshkin (Charles University, Prague) is
called "Escaping the 'Memory of Genre': Strategies of Ideologization and
De-ideologization in Czech Historical Prose" is devoted to evolution of the
genre of historical novel in Czech literature of the second half of the 20th
century in the context of interrelations between writers and the existing
ideology. The author states that the so-called "Alois Irasek action" 
(forming
the ideological canon for historical prose in the 1940s - 1950s, after
communists had come to power) was based not only on the dogmas of socialist
realism with reference to Czech literature, but also on the then existing
tradition which took its origin in the period of XIX century National
Renaissance, when it was historical writing which reflected the predominant
ideological principles more fully. The development of Czech historical novel
duting the 1960s - 1990s is viewed in terms of the various strategies of
de-ideologization of the genre, including breaking off fully from the 
tradition,
with the brilliant example of Vladimir Neffs postmodernist trilogy 
"Queens Don't
Have Legs".

In her essay on "Philosopher's Stone, or Being on the Losing Side" Faina
Grimberg (Moscow), an author of historical novels, analyzed the position 
of a
historical novelist in today's world. The main issues, which Grimberg 
tries to
address in her novels, are an alternative interpretation of historic 
events, as
opposed to what is generally acknowledged, and a new understanding of 
national
community. Thus in her novel "Andey Yaroslavitch" the main character of 
the 13th
century history of Russia is prince Andrey, the brother and rival of 
Alexander
Nevsky, canonized by the orthodox Church. In the novel called "A Female 
Flutist
on Sentry Hill" the writer describes the history of an imaginary Balkan 
people -
tavils. On the whole, Grimberg's main strategy is describing history 
from the
point of view of those who lost.

Dragan Kujundzic (University of California, Irvine). "After "After": The 
Ark ive
Fever of Alexander Sokurov". The Soviet period represents an absent cause of
Aleksander Sokurov's film "The Russian Ark", its catastrophic effects on the
building generate the repressed or invisible origin that makes this movie
possible. It is because it is a post-historic and post-catastrophic 
event, that
the explicit aspiration of the movie to be a salvation can be at all 
meaningful.
The Hermitage is The Russian Ark after the catastrophic flood of Soviet 
History.
The film also marks a departure from the epoch of filming with the film 
stock,
since it is entirely made in one single shot with a high-definition video
camera.

IN MEMORIAM: LEONID A. VINOGRADOV (27.06.1936 - 1.04.2004)

This section is dedicated to memory of Leonid Vinogradov - poet, playwriter
and author of novels.


The Academic Chronicles section publishes a number of reports on Russian and
overseas conferences and seminars that took place during Autumn of 2004.

The issue also presents an extensive book review.