Опубликовано в журнале Неприкосновенный запас, номер 5, 2009
The 67th issue of NZ, being formally not a thematic one, consists basically of texts devoted to “theory”. This includes an attempt to construct “the theory of fear” as phenomenon of public consciousness (“Fear from the Year 2009” by Alexander Pyatigorsky), a discussion on interference of the political theory and depoliticization practices on the example of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis (conversation with the French psychoanalyst, Jacques-Alain Miller). The analysis of reasons for “theoretical poverty” of the modern Russian historiography is provided in the article “Histories That Are Not Written by Us” by the Moscow mediaevalist, Yury Zaretsky). We will also mention the reasoning on some features of not a theory, but practice of modern academic life by Mikhail Sokolov (“The Academic Tourism: About One Form of Secondary Adaptation to Institutes of International Science”).
The first big topic of the 67th issue is devoted to one of the versions of the “Left” political theory. Our authors identify themselves as the “Left”. Accordingly, the reader faces a kind of “introspection” — that of course excludes neither critics, nor polemics. Alexander Tarasov (“Mother of Disorder”), Vadim Damier and Dmitry Rublev (“Economic Views of Peter Kropotkin and Challenges of the 21st Century”) write on the controversies of the theory and practices of anarchism. Alexander Shubin tries to grope an image of what he calls “socialism of the 21st century”, and Boris Kagarlitsky gives the critical analysis of the left intellectuals who are not ready, in his opinion, to radical change of the society. This selection of articles is adjoined by a curious research of history of the so-called “Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv” (“The Socialist Patients’ Collective”) — leftist German organization of the end of the 1960s — beginning of the 1970s (“Murderer of White Gowns” by Evgeniy Kazakov).
The “left” theme is partly continued by the second block devoted to out-of-market, out-of-state manufacture and culture reproduction (or to be more precise “cultures” in plural and even “subcultures”). Different aspects of this phenomenon in a modern society are analyzed in the texts of Alexander Bikbov (“Economy and Policy of Critical Judgment”) and Vlad Tupikin (“Note about Russian “Samizdat” in the 1990s and 2000s”). Alexander Bikbov, besides his own article, presents the interview with the Petersburg artist Dmitry Vilensky. The reader should also pay attention to the conversation of writer Magnus Edgren with the director Emmanuel Rouglan on such a specific theme, as “employment” in “cultural manufacture”. Edgren and Rouglan most of all concentrate on the situation in the French culture (cinema, TV, theatre) where the role of the state is so strong. The sketch concerning relatively new blogger political culture in Great Britain offers one of the most known journalists of this country Iain Dale; other type of culture — subculture of squatters in the Republic of South Africa — a theme of the article by Olga Aksyutina and Daria Zelenova.
Authors of our permanent rubrics Political Imaginary and Sociological Lyrics also contribute to the 67th issue of NZ on the theme of political “left”: about anarchism (Alexander Kustarev) and about socialism in its present Russian state version (Alexey Levinson). These texts are adjourned by the article of the NZ editor-in-chief Ilya Kalinin “The Heroic Theater of Revolutionary Life”.
Besides the “left” theme and analysis of the subcultures connected therewith, there is Dmitry Panchenko’s research devoted to the important historiography problem of chronological frameworks of the Modern Era. It is worth to pay attention to the two interviews in this issue: the first one is with the British historian Geoffrey Hosking (about the Second World War which 70th anniversary was this year in September) and with Alvaro Gil-Robles, the former Commissioner of human rights of the Council of Europe. The theme of the Russian XX century is continued in Lyudmila Klimovich’s conversations with members of the National-Labor Union (NTS) which can become the important source in studying of history of this organization.
At the end of this NZ issue there is Russian Intellectual Journals’ Review (Vyacheslav Morozov, Peter Rezvyh) and the New Books section.