Опубликовано в журнале Неприкосновенный запас, номер 2, 2013
If
88th NZ issue could be said to have a single main topic, it would be something
along these lines: “socio-political theory and social practice”. Indeed, the
issue opens with several selections of articles, each related to this theme in
one way or another. Our readers are sure to be quite interested in a section
titled “Michel Foucault: The Responsibility of Thought
and an Intellectual’s Engagement”. It starts with a curious interview: the philosopher talked to Roger-Pol Droit in 1975, but the piece was not published in French
until
The relation between political theory and practice
is further explored in another section, Political Theory and Depoliticisation
Practices. The concept of Total Strike is the main motif of an
article by the renowned leftist activist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, while Judith Butler, whose status is approaching
that of the classic of contemporary feminism, formulates the main aims, tactics
and methods of struggle for
the Occupy movement, which was in the news
until recently.
In his regular column,
Sociological
Lyrics, Alexey Levinson talks about the reaction of Russian society,
which to a certain extent still lives in the previous historical period, to a
range of sexual minorities-related problems (a burning issue in the last two
years). His article is entitled “Society
as a Victim of Homophobia”.
Alexander Kustarev
expands theoretical reflections on the life of society, viewed as “practice”,
and on socio-political theories. In his column “Capitalism. Culture. Intelligentsia” he goes as far
as introducing an interesting concept, “capitalist mobilisation of culture”,
which involves the transformation of culture (understood in broad terms) into a
“market modernisation” resource, in
Indeed, the concept of “resource”, so popular
these days, is yet another hidden meta-topic of this issue, one of its sections
titled “Resources and Political Order”. It comprises two articles. Alexander Etkind
interprets turbulent events of Russian socio-political life as a conflict
between knowledge and capital (note his formula, “meanwhile, the clever are
becoming ever poorer, the rich ever more stupid”). Also featured in the issue
is the American political scientist Timothy Mitchell; a chapter from his
much-debated book “Carbon Democracy. Political Power in the Age of
Oil” has been translated and
published under the title “Machines of Democracy”. To return to last
year’s Russian socio-political life, Jadwiga Rogoża,
an expert working at the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, gives a brief
and convincing analysis of changes in Russia’s public conscience, tumultuous as
they have been, as well as of the way in which these changes have become a
political activity resource (“«A Knock From Downstairs»: Russian Society
Initiates Change”).
Issue 88 has a special section concerned with problems of sport — and,
specifically, the Olympics. The forthcoming 2014 Games, to be held in
The issue has two stand-alone pieces, an essay by the novelist Vladimir
Sharov “What We Are Founded on” (the title
hints at certain foundations, present-day and eternal, intrinsic to
As usual, the issue ends with a bibliography section. Petr Rezvykh reviews Russian
intellectual journals, while Andrey Tikhomirov’s
piece covers three books by the Ukrainian historian Andrey Portnov.
Among the New Books section is Polina Barskova’s
response to the first novel about the Siege of Leningrad (“The Siege”) by
Anatoly Darov, first published in