Stasis

Introduction

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Introduction to the issue.

Toward the immanent sense of morality

2023-05-31T15:45:10+00:00

We explore the idea of morality using the analysis of contradictions or the aporia formulated by Jacques Derrida in his project of deconstruction. The concentration on this aporia gives final rigor to the analysis of morality. We use Deleuze's methods to bypass the contradictions formulated by Derrida, such a method allows us not to deny the aporia itself, but to rethink it as positive knowledge. The problem, or aporia, shown by Derrida is that we cannot describe a moral act as a rational act. Firstly, because an act will not be moral if it is committed for the purpose of any benefit, including personal moral perfection. Secondly, because we can imagine a situation where a moral act has successfully achieved its goals, the moral ideal seems fundamentally unattainable. Discussing on this aporia of morality follows us to think morality immanently, that means to consider a value of a moral act based on very content of the act, but not any external benefits. In this sense, morality should be understood as an opportunity to “act out of duty”, that is, to go beyond the limits of actual interests, laws and rules. In this sense, a moral act is an event of transition from one state of social ties to another. Moreover, this is such a transition that implies the absence of the need to choose one or another state — a new social connection is not determined nor by obligations or benefits. To be moral is to appreciate such a transition to the unknown new, to new relationships, to believe in the value of these new relationships.

Building an objective life. The concept of activity in Pavel Florensky and Evald Ilyenkov

2023-05-31T15:53:23+00:00

The topical debates in philosophy, devoted to the search for modes of human (and non-human) activity in areality where free activity would be possible but “pseudo-activity” or radical passivity to the point of refusal of work would not, allow us to mobilize and engage two contrasting conceptualizations of liberating activity in a conversation. Specifically, the article focuses on Florensky's concept of “concrete idealism” or “sacral materialism” and Ilyenkov's activity theory. The aim of the article is to highlight the relevance of the two different approaches of 20th century Russian philosophy, religious and Marxist, and their antagonism, yet complementarity based on a unifying element — the concept of activity. In these philosophical projects, activity is comprehended and simultaneously justified in the context of the idea of the collective inorganic body, opening the subject towards the object, or, as Florensky puts it, allowing the subject to “rise above subjectivity”. Such an activity is concerned neither with consumption, nor with pleasure, alienation, or instrumentality: these two projects of activity are filled with the pathos of liberation, even overcoming the end of history.

even overcoming the end of history.

Bartram’s Toy Production as a Knowledge Network

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Russian collector, art theorist and pedagogue Nikolai Bartram can be classified as an early Soviet avant-garde labor enthusiast. For him, the toy had a double meaning: it represented basic labor processes and pre-existing logistical connections, and it conveyed autonomous knowledge. Bartram boldly reduced the aesthetic and practical side of the toy to this autonomy of knowledge, and following the achievements of pedagogy of the time, proposed his own model of the development of the handicraft. In this model, the proper placement of toys as both instruments of idealization of folk crafts and instruments of proper systematic knowledge of them confronts the logic of capitalism and substantiates a system of interactions between people and things that foreshadows the actor-network approach. Reading Bartram’s texts and considering the toys he developed and the museum he opened as an instrument of social design in the light of the actor-network theory makes it possible both to see the unity of his activity before and after the revolution and to introduce him in the canon of early Soviet avant-garde intellectuals who problematized productive labor through aesthetic means.

On the Cultural Genealogy of the Method in Dau: Ideology, Aesthetics, Ethics

2023-05-31T16:08:27+00:00

Unlike numerous critical texts that question the ethical and institutional characteristics of Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dau project, in this paper I explore the project’s genesis as a cultural and ideological phenomenon. I reveal the project’s bonds with its cultural predecessors, such as Anatoly Vasiliev, Boris Yukhananov, Yuri Mamleev, Vladimir Martynov, and Vladimir Sorokin. I research not only the study of Soviet totalitarianism in Dau (which the project meticulously reenacts) but also the genealogy of dissident and postsocialist non-conformist cultural codes, which, despite their critique of totalitarianism, often fall into the trap of reproducing those totalitarian features. Mapping artistic devices used in Dau, the paper then focuses at length on the issues of power distribution in the organization of performative process enacted by the project’s participants.

Acting on Death

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In this essay, I focus on the problem of death as both a contemporary phenomenon that is either very weakly accounted for or even vilified and as a constitutive part of one’s experiential and decision-making abilities. I posit the need to somehow reintroduce death to our worldview as something acceptable. I investigate the overlapping of human-death and human- nature relationship in various strands of liberatory thinking, such as trans- and posthumanism and Russian cosmism. I subsequently turn to Andrei Platonov’s literary work as a depiction of liberation-in-progress and its complications and to the philosophies of Val Plumwood and Freya Mathews, the representatives of nature-centered, ecological philosophy. The two accounts have a common point of departure but nevertheless propose substantially different perspectives as to how the relations within and with nature are constructed. I conclude that the adoption of a more laissez-faire stance toward death also means a more careful consideration of nature’s value.

К диалектической теории этики. Дискуссия

2023-09-22T13:48:08+00:00

Дискуссия.

Участвуют: Артемий Магун, Антон Сюткин, Ирина Жеребкина, Рубен Апресян*, Екатерина Хан, Яна Маркова.

* Апресян Рубен Грантович (внесен в реестр иностранных агентов).

От Шмитта к Хайеку. Интеллектуальная история менеджериальной контрреволюции Грегуара Шамаю

2023-05-31T16:34:16+00:00

Book Review: Gregoire Chamayou, The Ungovernable Society. A Genealogy of Authoritarian Liberalism.

Polity, 2021, 350 p. ISBN: 978-1-509-54202-4