Boris Porshnev’s Dialectic of History
Keywords:
Porshnev, Soviet philosophy, negativity, dialectic, human evolution
Abstract
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.
References
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Franklin, Michael, and Michael Zyphur (2005). “The Role of Dreams in the Evolution of the Human Mind.” Evolutionary Psychology 3: 60–78.
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Gallese, Vittorio, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, and Giacomo Rizzolatti (1996). “Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex.” Brain. 119.2: 593–609.
Gehlen, Arnold (1988). Man, His Nature, and his Place in the World. New York: Columbia University Press.
Haraway, Donna (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
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Luxemburg, Rosa (2003). The Accumulation of Capital. New York: Routledge.
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Mandelshtam, Ossip (2009–2011). Polnoe sobranie sochineniy i pisem [Collected works and letters], 3 Vols. Moscow: Progress-Pleyada.
Masataka Nobuo (2007). “Music, Evolution and Language.” In Developmental Science 10.1: 35–39.
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Pelevin, Viktor (2011). Ananasnaya Voda Dlya Prekrasnoy Damy [Pineapple water for the fair lady]. Moscow: Eksmo.
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Porshnev, Boris (1963). Sovremennoe sostoyanie voprosa o reliktovykh gominoidakh. [The present state of the question on the relict hominids] Moscow: VINITI.
Porshnev, Boris (1964). Feodalizm i narodnye massy. [Feudalism and popular masses] Moscow: Nauka.
Porshnev, Boris (1974). O nachale chelovecheskoy istorii [On the origin of human history] Moscow: Mysl.
Porshnev, Boris (1977). Popular Uprisings in France before the Fronde. New York: Springer.
Porshnev, Boris (1978). Sotsialnaya psychologia i istoria. [Social psychology and history] [1966]. Moscow: Nauka.
Porshnev, Boris (1996). Muscovy and Sweden in the Thirty Years’ War, 1630–1635. Ed. Paul Dukes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Porshnev, Boris (2007). O nachale chelovecheskoy istorii [On the origin of human histo ry]. Moscow: Aletheia.
Porshnev, Boris (2012). Zagadka Snezhnogo Cheloveka. Sovremennoe sostoyanie voprosa o reliktovykh gominoidakh [Snowman’s Mystery. The present state of the question on the relict hominids]. Moscow: EKSMO.
Porshnev, Boris. Manuscript Division of the Russian State Library (ORRGB), F. 684.
Revonsuo, Antti (2000). “The Reinterpretation of Dreams: An Evolutionary Hypothesis of the Function of Dreaming.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23: 877–901.
Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Corrado Sinigaglia (2008). Mirrors in the Brain: How our Minds Share Actions and Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1992). Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. New York: Hackett. Schippers, Marlen B., Alard Roebroeck, Remco Renken, Luca Nanetti, and Christain Keysers (2010). “Mapping the Information Flow from One Brain to Another During Gestural Communication.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 107.20: 9388–93.
Shklovsky, Viktor (1998). “Art as Technique” [1917]. In Literary Theory: An Anthology, eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, 15–21. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Stalin, Joseph (1935). “Rech na soveschanii peredovykh kolkhoznikov I kolkhoznits Tadjikistana i Turkmenistana s rukovoditeliami partii i pravitelstva” [Speech at the meeting of advanced collective farms and collective farmers of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan with the leaders of the party and government]. Pravda December 4.
Tajfel, Henry, ed. (1978). Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psy chology of Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press.
Tomasello, Michael (1999). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, Michael (2008) Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ukhtomsky, Alexei (2002). Dominanta. St Petersburg: Piter.
Virno, Paolo (2013). Il saggio della negazione. Rome: Bollati Boringhieri.
Vite, Oleg (1998), Opyt sozdania sinteticheskoy nauki ob obstchestvennom cheloveke i chelovecheskom obstchestve. [An attempt of creating a synthetic science of a social man and human society] Politia 3.
Vite, Oleg (2007). “Kniga ‘O nachale chelovecheskoy istorii’ i ee mesto v biografii B. Porshneva” [The book ‘On the beginning of human history’ and its place in the biography of B. Porshnev]. In O Nachale Chelovecheskoy Istorii [On the beginning of human history], 576–706. Moscow: Aletheia.
Vite, Oleg (2016). Tvorcheskoe nasledie B.F. Porshneva i ego sovremennoe znachenie [The creative legacy of B.F. Porshnev and its modern meaning]. http://www.2lib.ru/ getbook/2261.html
Vygotsky, Lev (1962). Thought and Language [1934]. Trans. Eugenia Hanfmann, Gertrude Vakar, and Norris Minnick. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Vygotsky, Lev (1983). Sobranie Sochineniy v 6 tomakh [Collected works in six volumes]. Moscow: Pedagogika.
Voloshinov, Valentin (2013). Freudianism: A Marxist Critique. London: Verso.
Weller, Shane (2016). “From ‘Gedicht’ to ‘Genicht’: Paul Celan and Language Scepticism.” German Life and Letter 69.1: 69–91.
Badiou, Alain (2005). Being and Event. Trans. Oliver Feltham. London: Continuum.
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1968). Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Bickerton, Derek (1981). The Roots of Language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.
Bogdanov, Konstantin (2015). Vox populi. Folklornye zhanry Sovetskoy kultury [Vox populi. Folklore genres of Soviet culture]. Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie.
Braidotti, Rosi (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brandenberger, David (2010). “Stalin’s Populism and the Accidental Creation of Russian National Identity.” Nationalities Papers 38.5: 723–39.
Byrne, Richard, and Andrew Whiten, eds. (1988). Machiavellian Intelligence. Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Cann, Rebecca, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Wilson (1987). “Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution.” Nature 325: 31–36.
Celan, Paul (1986). Gesammelte werke in fünf bänden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Clastres, Pierre (1989). Society Against the State. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Clastres, Pierre (2010). Archeology of Violence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Deacon, Terrence (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: Norton.
Dunbar, Robin (1996). Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Forster, Peter, and Shuichi Matsumura (2005). “Did Early Humans Go North or South?” Science 308.5724: 965–66.
Foucault, Michel (1972), Archeology of Knowledge. Trans. N. Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications.
Foucault, Michel (2015a). Punitive Society. Trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Foucault, Michel (2015b). Théories et institutions pénales. Paris: Seuil.
Franklin, Michael, and Michael Zyphur (2005). “The Role of Dreams in the Evolution of the Human Mind.” Evolutionary Psychology 3: 60–78.
Freud, Sigmund (1999). Totem and Taboo. New York: Psychology Press.
Gallese, Vittorio, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, and Giacomo Rizzolatti (1996). “Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex.” Brain. 119.2: 593–609.
Gehlen, Arnold (1988). Man, His Nature, and his Place in the World. New York: Columbia University Press.
Haraway, Donna (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
Heidegger, Martin (1962). Being and Time. Trans. John McQuarrie and Edward Robin son. New York: Harper and Row.
Heidegger, Martin (1995). The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude. Trans. William McNeill, Nicholas Walker. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ilyenkov, Evald (2017). “Cosmology of Spirit” Stasis (forthcoming).
Knight, Chris (1998). “Ritual/Speech Coevolution: A Solution to the Problem of Deception.” In Approaches to the Evolution of Language, eds. James R Hurford, Michael Studdert- Kennedy, and Chris Knight, 68–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kondratieva, Tamara (2012). “B. F. Porshnev chitaet Bakunina” [B. F. Porshnev reads Bakunin]. Vestnik Tiumenskogo Universiteta. Seriia Istoria [Tyumen University bul letin. History series] 2: 210–14.
Kozintsev, Alexander (2010). The Mirror of Laughter. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Leatherbarrow, William, and Derek Offord, eds. (2010). A History of Russian Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Losev, Alexey (1994). Philosophiia Imeni [Philosophy of name] [1927]. Moscow: Mysl.
Luxemburg, Rosa (2003). The Accumulation of Capital. New York: Routledge.
Magun, Artemy (2013). Negative Revolution. London: Bloomsbury.
Mandelshtam, Ossip (2009–2011). Polnoe sobranie sochineniy i pisem [Collected works and letters], 3 Vols. Moscow: Progress-Pleyada.
Masataka Nobuo (2007). “Music, Evolution and Language.” In Developmental Science 10.1: 35–39.
Meillassoux, Quentin (2008). After Finitude: An Essay On The Necessity Of Contingency. Trans. Ray Brassier. London: Continuum.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2006). On the Genealogy of Morality and Other Writings. Trans Car ol Diethe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pelevin, Viktor (2016). Lampa Mafusaila ili Kraynyaya Borba Chekistov s Masonami [Lamp of Methuselah, or extreme battle security officers with the masons]. Moscow: Eksmo.
Pelevin, Viktor (2011). Ananasnaya Voda Dlya Prekrasnoy Damy [Pineapple water for the fair lady]. Moscow: Eksmo.
Petrides, Michael, Genevieve Cadoret, and Scott Mackey (2005). “Orofacial somatomotor responses in the macaque monkey homologue of Broca’s area.” Nature 435: 1235–38.
Porshnev, Boris (1963). Sovremennoe sostoyanie voprosa o reliktovykh gominoidakh. [The present state of the question on the relict hominids] Moscow: VINITI.
Porshnev, Boris (1964). Feodalizm i narodnye massy. [Feudalism and popular masses] Moscow: Nauka.
Porshnev, Boris (1974). O nachale chelovecheskoy istorii [On the origin of human history] Moscow: Mysl.
Porshnev, Boris (1977). Popular Uprisings in France before the Fronde. New York: Springer.
Porshnev, Boris (1978). Sotsialnaya psychologia i istoria. [Social psychology and history] [1966]. Moscow: Nauka.
Porshnev, Boris (1996). Muscovy and Sweden in the Thirty Years’ War, 1630–1635. Ed. Paul Dukes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Porshnev, Boris (2007). O nachale chelovecheskoy istorii [On the origin of human histo ry]. Moscow: Aletheia.
Porshnev, Boris (2012). Zagadka Snezhnogo Cheloveka. Sovremennoe sostoyanie voprosa o reliktovykh gominoidakh [Snowman’s Mystery. The present state of the question on the relict hominids]. Moscow: EKSMO.
Porshnev, Boris. Manuscript Division of the Russian State Library (ORRGB), F. 684.
Revonsuo, Antti (2000). “The Reinterpretation of Dreams: An Evolutionary Hypothesis of the Function of Dreaming.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23: 877–901.
Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Corrado Sinigaglia (2008). Mirrors in the Brain: How our Minds Share Actions and Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1992). Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. New York: Hackett. Schippers, Marlen B., Alard Roebroeck, Remco Renken, Luca Nanetti, and Christain Keysers (2010). “Mapping the Information Flow from One Brain to Another During Gestural Communication.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 107.20: 9388–93.
Shklovsky, Viktor (1998). “Art as Technique” [1917]. In Literary Theory: An Anthology, eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, 15–21. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Stalin, Joseph (1935). “Rech na soveschanii peredovykh kolkhoznikov I kolkhoznits Tadjikistana i Turkmenistana s rukovoditeliami partii i pravitelstva” [Speech at the meeting of advanced collective farms and collective farmers of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan with the leaders of the party and government]. Pravda December 4.
Tajfel, Henry, ed. (1978). Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psy chology of Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press.
Tomasello, Michael (1999). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, Michael (2008) Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ukhtomsky, Alexei (2002). Dominanta. St Petersburg: Piter.
Virno, Paolo (2013). Il saggio della negazione. Rome: Bollati Boringhieri.
Vite, Oleg (1998), Opyt sozdania sinteticheskoy nauki ob obstchestvennom cheloveke i chelovecheskom obstchestve. [An attempt of creating a synthetic science of a social man and human society] Politia 3.
Vite, Oleg (2007). “Kniga ‘O nachale chelovecheskoy istorii’ i ee mesto v biografii B. Porshneva” [The book ‘On the beginning of human history’ and its place in the biography of B. Porshnev]. In O Nachale Chelovecheskoy Istorii [On the beginning of human history], 576–706. Moscow: Aletheia.
Vite, Oleg (2016). Tvorcheskoe nasledie B.F. Porshneva i ego sovremennoe znachenie [The creative legacy of B.F. Porshnev and its modern meaning]. http://www.2lib.ru/ getbook/2261.html
Vygotsky, Lev (1962). Thought and Language [1934]. Trans. Eugenia Hanfmann, Gertrude Vakar, and Norris Minnick. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Vygotsky, Lev (1983). Sobranie Sochineniy v 6 tomakh [Collected works in six volumes]. Moscow: Pedagogika.
Voloshinov, Valentin (2013). Freudianism: A Marxist Critique. London: Verso.
Weller, Shane (2016). “From ‘Gedicht’ to ‘Genicht’: Paul Celan and Language Scepticism.” German Life and Letter 69.1: 69–91.
Published
2017-12-18
How to Cite
Magun, A. (2017). Boris Porshnev’s Dialectic of History. Stasis, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.33280/2310-3817-2017-5-2-218-246
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Articles
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