Artemy Magun | European University at St. Petersburg (original) (raw)
Papers by Artemy Magun
Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research, 2019
The South Atlantic Quarterly, 2017
Theory & Event, Volume 19, Issue 3, 2016
The article is devoted to the 2014–2016 turn in the Russian politics and seeks to explain the way... more The article is devoted to the 2014–2016 turn in the Russian politics and seeks to explain the way in which the Russian leadership fights against the new Ukrainian authorities and the «West». The conduct of Russia, with its mixture of mimicry and provocation, may be described, as hysterical. Hysteria is a syndrome of repressed aggression and normative love that is expressed in rhetorically charged action. As such, it is an efficient military strategy aiming at the recognition from other states and international organizations. This situation is significant also because it represents a capture of the paradigm of spontaneous popular revolution.
Sotsiologicheskoe Obozrenie / Russian Sociological Review
The article addresses the notion of communism with a special angle of factuality and negativity, ... more The article addresses the notion of communism with a special angle of factuality and negativity, and not in the usual sense of a futurist utopia. After considering the main contemporary theories of communism in left-leaning political thought, the author turns to the Soviet experience of an "actually existing communism. " Apart from and against the bureaucratic state, a social reality existed organized around res nullius, that is, an unappropriated world that was not a collective property, as in the case of res publica. The alienation from things and from the state resulted not only in the sense of oppression, but in a new culture of a paradoxical "communality" (A. Zinoviev), where the "Other, " be it a thing or a person, appears rather as ground, not figure. This culture of a non-thematic gaze led to a formation of a communality as a given, and not as a utopian desideratum. I claim that this is a major difference between the current Western society and a post-Communist society. The former is more solidary and collectivist, but only consciously and deliberately so, operating from an individualist ontology, while the latter is individualist, but with an assumption of the "Other" as a pre-given fact. In this chiasmus, both "communisms" are problematic, so that an alternative model of individuation (Virno), rather than the atomization of an assumed collectivity, would be preferable.
Stasis
Michael Marder's new book sets a goal even more ambitious than his previous works that were ambit... more Michael Marder's new book sets a goal even more ambitious than his previous works that were ambitious enough: he endeavors to analyze and describe the concept of energy, and applies it to current affairs. This concept, invented by Aristotle, was once central to premodern European theory. In the nineteenth century it was reinvented and redefined by physicists, only to regain its former weight, this time not in philosophy but in politics, economy, psychology, and in everyday spontaneous metaphysics. "Energy" is everywhere, it is often presented as a higher value of life, above the good and the true. And its cult involves the ever-present anxiety of its loss. However, philosophy has generally had a hard time approaching this subject (with the notable exception of the great Russian philosopher Vladimir Bibikhin, author of the book Energy, still untranslated, which influenced Marder). This is so for three reasons: 1) Great figures of continental thought, such as Heidegger and Lacan, expressed disdain for this overly metaphysical (i.e., absolutist, optimistic) and overly technological notion. 2) The current vulgar usage of the word actually inverts its original meaning (as usually happens to great Modern concepts). Therefore, philosophers are at a loss as to which meaning to discuss: the proper, classical one, or the diametrically opposed metaphorical one accepted in physics and in popular culture. What we normally refer to as energy is an indeterminate quantifiable resource for eventual activity, or, in Aristotelian terms, precisely possibility, dynamis, and not energeia, or actuality.
Stasis
The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the subs... more The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the substantive gloom of a modernist artwork with the catastrophes that happen at the level of its form. In this sense, there is a difference among the shock aesthetic of mass culture, the abstraction of avant-garde, and the ideological and figurative construction that is provided by a symbolist artwork. The article offers an apology of symbolism, primarily in plastic arts, and demonstrates its incessant influence.
MLN, 2004
The modern notion of history was definitively formulated in the eighteenth century, when Rousseau... more The modern notion of history was definitively formulated in the eighteenth century, when Rousseau and Kant restricted the access of humans to their own supersensible, substantial nature (essence). Man appeared as a historical being, one whose definition lies in his ...
Художественный журнал № 109, 2019
СТАСИС, 2018
Статья посвящена проблеме негативности в искусстве символизма, который я понимаю здесь как протом... more Статья посвящена проблеме негативности в искусстве
символизма, который я понимаю здесь как протомодернизм.
Негативность связывает содержательную мрачность
модернистского произведения и катастрофы, происходящие
на уровне его формы. В этом смысле есть разница между
шоковой эстетикой массовой культуры, абстракцией
авангарда и идеологической фигуративной конструкцией
негативности, которую дает символистское произведение.
Статья предлагает своеобразную апологию символизма,
прежде всего в пластических искусствах, и демонстрирует его
непрекращающееся влияние
Stasis, 2018
The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the subs... more The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the substantive gloom of a modernist artwork with the catastrophes that happen at the level of its form. In this sense, there is a difference among the shock aesthetic of mass culture, the abstraction of avant-garde, and the ideological and figurative construction that is provided by a symbolist artwork. The article offers an apology of symbolism, primarily in plastic arts, and demonstrates its incessant influence.
The article explores the legacy of Boris Porshnev, a remarkable Soviet Marxist thinker who contri... more The article explores the legacy of Boris Porshnev, a remarkable Soviet Marxist thinker who contributed to history, psychology, physiology, and philosophy, from a particular dialectical perspective. Porshnev elaborated an innovative hypothesis of the origin of human species. He saw this origin in the emergence of language as (1) a means to mutual subjection and (2) means to resist subjection. A vivid, almost mythical picture of early human history is at the same time made rigorous through a consistent use of dialectical argument. This argument, in contrast with the Soviet doxa of “dialectical materialism,” privileges negativity as a special force and moment of development, and negativity takes the form of contrariness. The article discusses the value of Porshnev’s theory in the international context, and puts it into the broader context of Soviet unorthodox philosophy, all the while contributing to a general theory of negativity.
This article is devoted to the work of the leading living Russian prose writer, Viktor Pelevin, i... more This article is devoted to the work of the leading living Russian prose writer, Viktor Pelevin, in the context of the image and idea of world's end that is so present in his writings. In many of Pelevin's novels, a fictional world that the reader first accepts turns out to be a deliberate creation of this or that demiurge, realistically depicted as spin doctor. Apocalypse is thus rendered in a Gnostic/Buddhist manner. What is specific for Pelevin against a background of the postmodern and cyberpunk genres he continues, is the elaboration of an antiworld symbolic weapon, a formula that counters a world so as to make it perish. The main reason for this motif is the desire to protect/shelter oneself—and the reader—from the violence of language that remains authoritative even in absence of any public authority.
7KH DUWLFOH GHDOV ZLWK WKH KLVWRU\ RI WKH FRQFHSW RI QHJDWLYLW\ LQ ZHVWHUQ WKRXJKW :KLOH UHSURGXF... more 7KH DUWLFOH GHDOV ZLWK WKH KLVWRU\ RI WKH FRQFHSW RI QHJDWLYLW\ LQ ZHVWHUQ WKRXJKW :KLOH UHSURGXFLQJ WKH FODVVLFDO DSSURDFKHV LQ DOO HVVHQWLDO GHWDLOV WKH WH[W H[FHHGV WKH HQF\FORSHGLD IRUPDW RI HQF\FORSHGLD VLQFH LW VHHNV WR GHVFULEH DQG V\VWHPDWL]H WKH PDLQ IHDWXUHV RI QHJDWLRQ DV DbORJLFDO DQG OLQJXLVWLF RSHUDWRU LWV DV\PPHWU\ ZLWK DIˋUPDWLRQ LWV LQFRPSOHWLRQ DQG LQˋQLW\ LWV ODWHQF\ LQ DOWHUQDWLRQ ZLWK K\SHUEROLF UHSHWLWLRQ )XUWKHU LQ LWV UHOLDQFH RQ $ULVWRWOH .DQW DQG +HJHO WKH DUWLFOH HPSKDVL]HV WKH FUXFLDO UROH RI LQYHUVLRQ FRUUHODWLYH FRQWUDU\ RU UHDO RSSRVLWLRQ DV DbVFKHPH DQG SUDFWLFDO UHDOL]DWLRQ RI QHJDWLRQ 7KH KLVWRU\ RI QHJDWLRQ LV WKHQ DQFKRUHG LQ WKH VRFLRSROLWLFDO FRQWH[W ZKHUH LW LV VKRZQ WR EH DbQHFHVVDU\ IRUP RI VXEMHFWLYL]DWLRQ LQ WKH ODWH PRGHUQLW\ ZLWK LWV H[FHVV RI LQHVFDSDEOH EHLQJ
Rethinking Marxism, Jan 1, 2010
Дискуссия в Художественном журнале
Law and Evil. Philosophy, Politics, Psychoanalysis. NY, Milton Park: Routledge, 2010. P. 148-168.
сп. Критика и хуманизъм, Jan 1, 2010
(1) Today, twenty years after the end of the Cold War and of the international system built of tw... more (1) Today, twenty years after the end of the Cold War and of the international system built of two opposing 'blocs', it is increasingly obvious that this system gave rise not to any new stable system, but to an ongoing crisis in international relations, particularly regarding the law of war and peace. This crisis above all consists in the erosion of all external political frontiers, and the coexistence of a universal world order oriented at the regulative idea of eternal peace, with a no less universal, expanding war. This war, which has proliferating local centres, no longer has an inter-state status with two equivalent parts each recognising the other as such, but is, in a way, a civil war of the world community and/or of the big world powers against various 'extremists', 'terrorists', and the like. Because most local conflicts attract intervention by world powers, they turn into police operations, on one side of a conflict, and into partisan resistance on the other.@1 This eternal peace-war is the result of the internalisation of international law, where borders of sovereign states no longer constitute an outside subject against whom one can go to war, but are rather sites of a pacified and suspended internal conflict.
Globalization and Inequality in Emerging Societies, 2011
Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research, 2019
The South Atlantic Quarterly, 2017
Theory & Event, Volume 19, Issue 3, 2016
The article is devoted to the 2014–2016 turn in the Russian politics and seeks to explain the way... more The article is devoted to the 2014–2016 turn in the Russian politics and seeks to explain the way in which the Russian leadership fights against the new Ukrainian authorities and the «West». The conduct of Russia, with its mixture of mimicry and provocation, may be described, as hysterical. Hysteria is a syndrome of repressed aggression and normative love that is expressed in rhetorically charged action. As such, it is an efficient military strategy aiming at the recognition from other states and international organizations. This situation is significant also because it represents a capture of the paradigm of spontaneous popular revolution.
Sotsiologicheskoe Obozrenie / Russian Sociological Review
The article addresses the notion of communism with a special angle of factuality and negativity, ... more The article addresses the notion of communism with a special angle of factuality and negativity, and not in the usual sense of a futurist utopia. After considering the main contemporary theories of communism in left-leaning political thought, the author turns to the Soviet experience of an "actually existing communism. " Apart from and against the bureaucratic state, a social reality existed organized around res nullius, that is, an unappropriated world that was not a collective property, as in the case of res publica. The alienation from things and from the state resulted not only in the sense of oppression, but in a new culture of a paradoxical "communality" (A. Zinoviev), where the "Other, " be it a thing or a person, appears rather as ground, not figure. This culture of a non-thematic gaze led to a formation of a communality as a given, and not as a utopian desideratum. I claim that this is a major difference between the current Western society and a post-Communist society. The former is more solidary and collectivist, but only consciously and deliberately so, operating from an individualist ontology, while the latter is individualist, but with an assumption of the "Other" as a pre-given fact. In this chiasmus, both "communisms" are problematic, so that an alternative model of individuation (Virno), rather than the atomization of an assumed collectivity, would be preferable.
Stasis
Michael Marder's new book sets a goal even more ambitious than his previous works that were ambit... more Michael Marder's new book sets a goal even more ambitious than his previous works that were ambitious enough: he endeavors to analyze and describe the concept of energy, and applies it to current affairs. This concept, invented by Aristotle, was once central to premodern European theory. In the nineteenth century it was reinvented and redefined by physicists, only to regain its former weight, this time not in philosophy but in politics, economy, psychology, and in everyday spontaneous metaphysics. "Energy" is everywhere, it is often presented as a higher value of life, above the good and the true. And its cult involves the ever-present anxiety of its loss. However, philosophy has generally had a hard time approaching this subject (with the notable exception of the great Russian philosopher Vladimir Bibikhin, author of the book Energy, still untranslated, which influenced Marder). This is so for three reasons: 1) Great figures of continental thought, such as Heidegger and Lacan, expressed disdain for this overly metaphysical (i.e., absolutist, optimistic) and overly technological notion. 2) The current vulgar usage of the word actually inverts its original meaning (as usually happens to great Modern concepts). Therefore, philosophers are at a loss as to which meaning to discuss: the proper, classical one, or the diametrically opposed metaphorical one accepted in physics and in popular culture. What we normally refer to as energy is an indeterminate quantifiable resource for eventual activity, or, in Aristotelian terms, precisely possibility, dynamis, and not energeia, or actuality.
Stasis
The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the subs... more The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the substantive gloom of a modernist artwork with the catastrophes that happen at the level of its form. In this sense, there is a difference among the shock aesthetic of mass culture, the abstraction of avant-garde, and the ideological and figurative construction that is provided by a symbolist artwork. The article offers an apology of symbolism, primarily in plastic arts, and demonstrates its incessant influence.
MLN, 2004
The modern notion of history was definitively formulated in the eighteenth century, when Rousseau... more The modern notion of history was definitively formulated in the eighteenth century, when Rousseau and Kant restricted the access of humans to their own supersensible, substantial nature (essence). Man appeared as a historical being, one whose definition lies in his ...
Художественный журнал № 109, 2019
СТАСИС, 2018
Статья посвящена проблеме негативности в искусстве символизма, который я понимаю здесь как протом... more Статья посвящена проблеме негативности в искусстве
символизма, который я понимаю здесь как протомодернизм.
Негативность связывает содержательную мрачность
модернистского произведения и катастрофы, происходящие
на уровне его формы. В этом смысле есть разница между
шоковой эстетикой массовой культуры, абстракцией
авангарда и идеологической фигуративной конструкцией
негативности, которую дает символистское произведение.
Статья предлагает своеобразную апологию символизма,
прежде всего в пластических искусствах, и демонстрирует его
непрекращающееся влияние
Stasis, 2018
The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the subs... more The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the substantive gloom of a modernist artwork with the catastrophes that happen at the level of its form. In this sense, there is a difference among the shock aesthetic of mass culture, the abstraction of avant-garde, and the ideological and figurative construction that is provided by a symbolist artwork. The article offers an apology of symbolism, primarily in plastic arts, and demonstrates its incessant influence.
The article explores the legacy of Boris Porshnev, a remarkable Soviet Marxist thinker who contri... more The article explores the legacy of Boris Porshnev, a remarkable Soviet Marxist thinker who contributed to history, psychology, physiology, and philosophy, from a particular dialectical perspective. Porshnev elaborated an innovative hypothesis of the origin of human species. He saw this origin in the emergence of language as (1) a means to mutual subjection and (2) means to resist subjection. A vivid, almost mythical picture of early human history is at the same time made rigorous through a consistent use of dialectical argument. This argument, in contrast with the Soviet doxa of “dialectical materialism,” privileges negativity as a special force and moment of development, and negativity takes the form of contrariness. The article discusses the value of Porshnev’s theory in the international context, and puts it into the broader context of Soviet unorthodox philosophy, all the while contributing to a general theory of negativity.
This article is devoted to the work of the leading living Russian prose writer, Viktor Pelevin, i... more This article is devoted to the work of the leading living Russian prose writer, Viktor Pelevin, in the context of the image and idea of world's end that is so present in his writings. In many of Pelevin's novels, a fictional world that the reader first accepts turns out to be a deliberate creation of this or that demiurge, realistically depicted as spin doctor. Apocalypse is thus rendered in a Gnostic/Buddhist manner. What is specific for Pelevin against a background of the postmodern and cyberpunk genres he continues, is the elaboration of an antiworld symbolic weapon, a formula that counters a world so as to make it perish. The main reason for this motif is the desire to protect/shelter oneself—and the reader—from the violence of language that remains authoritative even in absence of any public authority.
7KH DUWLFOH GHDOV ZLWK WKH KLVWRU\ RI WKH FRQFHSW RI QHJDWLYLW\ LQ ZHVWHUQ WKRXJKW :KLOH UHSURGXF... more 7KH DUWLFOH GHDOV ZLWK WKH KLVWRU\ RI WKH FRQFHSW RI QHJDWLYLW\ LQ ZHVWHUQ WKRXJKW :KLOH UHSURGXFLQJ WKH FODVVLFDO DSSURDFKHV LQ DOO HVVHQWLDO GHWDLOV WKH WH[W H[FHHGV WKH HQF\FORSHGLD IRUPDW RI HQF\FORSHGLD VLQFH LW VHHNV WR GHVFULEH DQG V\VWHPDWL]H WKH PDLQ IHDWXUHV RI QHJDWLRQ DV DbORJLFDO DQG OLQJXLVWLF RSHUDWRU LWV DV\PPHWU\ ZLWK DIˋUPDWLRQ LWV LQFRPSOHWLRQ DQG LQˋQLW\ LWV ODWHQF\ LQ DOWHUQDWLRQ ZLWK K\SHUEROLF UHSHWLWLRQ )XUWKHU LQ LWV UHOLDQFH RQ $ULVWRWOH .DQW DQG +HJHO WKH DUWLFOH HPSKDVL]HV WKH FUXFLDO UROH RI LQYHUVLRQ FRUUHODWLYH FRQWUDU\ RU UHDO RSSRVLWLRQ DV DbVFKHPH DQG SUDFWLFDO UHDOL]DWLRQ RI QHJDWLRQ 7KH KLVWRU\ RI QHJDWLRQ LV WKHQ DQFKRUHG LQ WKH VRFLRSROLWLFDO FRQWH[W ZKHUH LW LV VKRZQ WR EH DbQHFHVVDU\ IRUP RI VXEMHFWLYL]DWLRQ LQ WKH ODWH PRGHUQLW\ ZLWK LWV H[FHVV RI LQHVFDSDEOH EHLQJ
Rethinking Marxism, Jan 1, 2010
Дискуссия в Художественном журнале
Law and Evil. Philosophy, Politics, Psychoanalysis. NY, Milton Park: Routledge, 2010. P. 148-168.
сп. Критика и хуманизъм, Jan 1, 2010
(1) Today, twenty years after the end of the Cold War and of the international system built of tw... more (1) Today, twenty years after the end of the Cold War and of the international system built of two opposing 'blocs', it is increasingly obvious that this system gave rise not to any new stable system, but to an ongoing crisis in international relations, particularly regarding the law of war and peace. This crisis above all consists in the erosion of all external political frontiers, and the coexistence of a universal world order oriented at the regulative idea of eternal peace, with a no less universal, expanding war. This war, which has proliferating local centres, no longer has an inter-state status with two equivalent parts each recognising the other as such, but is, in a way, a civil war of the world community and/or of the big world powers against various 'extremists', 'terrorists', and the like. Because most local conflicts attract intervention by world powers, they turn into police operations, on one side of a conflict, and into partisan resistance on the other.@1 This eternal peace-war is the result of the internalisation of international law, where borders of sovereign states no longer constitute an outside subject against whom one can go to war, but are rather sites of a pacified and suspended internal conflict.
Globalization and Inequality in Emerging Societies, 2011
Stasis, 2018
The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the subs... more The article is dedicated to the problem of negativity in modernist art. It ties together the substantive gloom of a modernist artwork with the catastrophes that happen at the level of its form. In this sense, there is a difference among the shock aesthetic of mass culture, the abstraction of avant-garde, and the ideological and figurative construction that is provided by a symbolist artwork. The article offers an apology of symbolism, primarily in plastic arts, and demonstrates its incessant influence.
Теории аффекта, магистерский курс 2019-2020
The Future of the State, 2020
The state invites one to use statist language when describing it. Hence the predominance of techn... more The state invites one to use statist language when describing it. Hence the predominance of technical, bureaucratic, and positivist language in the contemporary discussions of state. In many political cultures outside liberalism, the state has also presented itself as an object of a secular cult, a "myth" (in the parlance of Cassirer). In contrast to both ways of ideological selfpresentation, here I will offer a philosophical and dialectical perspective which takes state for more than what it would like itself to be. Today, there are four main aporetic oppositions inside the concept of state. The first is the tension between the state as an authoritarian vertical structure of power, and the democratic, republican context which followed the Modern state since the moment of its emergence. Of course, it is the absolutist state that subsequently got democratized. But, the impersonality of state did from the start allow for a republican interpretation. The late modern state, with its representative role, national identity, and its division between the elected and unelected officials, is unthinkable without the appeal to popular sovereignty. The top-down and the bottom up logics coexist, but, when taken in absolute terms, pose a contradiction. The inability to honestly account for the top-down constitutive logic makes a lay observer ideologically blinded and generates the false "technical" appearance of state. The second is the opposition between the state as a system of technical and instrumental, governance, and the state as polity. A we have seen in the Introduction, scholars usually distinguish the state from polity, but do not offer an alternative developed concept in its place, so that the place of a generic concept of polity remains vacant, and the common meaning of state as polity, repressed. In truth, however, this ambivalence is a sign of a genuine contradiction between the