Chronocide -
Prologue to the Resurrection of Time.
Mikhail N.
Epstein
It
is best not to look into the distance, or into the past;
Only
in the present is happiness and consolation
Johann
Wolfgang Goethe
Our
intelligentsia could not live in the present;
it
lived in the future, and sometimes in the past.
Nikolai
Berdyaev
1. Chronocide -
genocide - ecocide
To liberate the
future from the past ... To liberate the past from the future... For these two
apparently contradictory concepts there is one word: revolution. It might be
right-wing or left-wing, made in the name of the Great Utopia or the Great
Tradition, but it cannot but be bloody. The first victim of revolution is time.
Modern history has transformed the suffix “cide” - “murder” - into one of the
most productive of neologisms. Regicide, patricide, parricide, genocide,
ecocide... This suffix made an especially brilliant career after 1944, when the
word genocide was introduced into everyday life by the American lawyer of
Polish extraction, Raphael Lemkin. At the close of the century, generalising
from its rich criminal experience, I would like to suggest one more neologism:
“Chronocide” - the murder of time...
Chronocide, genocide
and ecocide are linked, as a rule, in a straight line of revolutionary
succession. Revolution starts with Chronocide, with the ideological murder of
the past in the name of an abstract future. Then the revolution starts to
devour the life of real people. This is genocide - the murder of whole nations,
estates or classes condemned to remain in the past, or deemed unworthy of the
future. In the end the exhausted revolution, despairing of giving what it
promised, and having destroyed society’s industrial forces, comes to a
conclusion in the rapacious consumption and destruction of defenceless nature -
in ecocide. After polishing off time, the revolution lunges on the people, and
finally exhausts the living resources of nature. Usually the consequences of
genocide and ecocide admit of a more objective estimation - demographical
losses, the exhaustion of natural resources. But the beginning of revolution is
Chronocide. It is an invisible cataclysm in the people’s consciousness, in
which it tears itself from the habitat of time, frees itself from the past.
... or from the
future. If at the dawn of the century the revolution was considered as a
victory over the bloody past, a leap into the coming kingdom of freedom, then
at the twilight of the century the rays of the setting sun nostalgically
illuminate the depths of history. And look! - the ideas of the right, of
counter-revolution, have begun to gain sway over minds. The Great Tradition,
forgotten over the course of the millennium, must now be freed from the rotten
deposits of chimerical progress. Let us heed the voice of the new revolution,
proclaiming the freedom of the past from the future: “Our basic task ... is the
restoration of the Integral Tradition in all its dimensions. Tradition,
according to René Genona, is the sum of divinely revealed,
super-temporal knowledge. It constituted the order of all sacred civilisations
- from the heavenly empires of the golden age, which disappeared many millennia
ago, to the civilisation of the middle ages...”1 This means that
everything that happened after the middle ages - Michelangelo and Leonardo,
Shakespeare and Goethe, Mozart and Kant - is a retreat, a betrayal, or a
mistake. All the novelties of the modern era - yes, the very idea of novelty
itself - must be burnt in the penitential fire of the last revolution. “The
fire of the global national revolution, the socialistic revolution, the last
revolution, which will terminate human history’s cycle of decline, is on the
march.”2
Again an
assault on time, this time the murder of a cursed future in the name of a holy
past! As always, Chronocide summons the spectre of revolution - this time not a
left-progressive but a Fascist or National-Socialist revolution. The crime of
revolutions is not only that they negate time, that they negate the life of
entire nations, but also that they create their own “monstrous negations.”3
The right-wing revolution, which is giving the boot to the twentieth
century - and indeed to the whole of the modern era - is the monstrous negation
of that left-wing revolution which repudiated the inheritance of the
“exploitatory” society and burst open the door to the classless future.
2. The Future
in the past. Anomalies of time in Russia.
Quite possibly,
this “reversal of time” happened nowhere with such insane consequences as in
Russia. Here the victim of the reciprocal “liberation” of the future from the
past was the present. It bore the bloody scar of the shattered chain of time.
The present here has almost never had its own independent value. It has been
perceived either as an echo of the past or a stepping stone to the future.
Didorot, who corresponded with Catherine II, and who despaired of bring the
fruits of Enlightenment to Russia, pointed out that this country was “a fruit
which has gone rotten before ripening.”4 In other words, the future
of this country turned out to be in its past, not having had time to ripen for
the present. Similar thoughts were subsequently expressed by Russian thinkers.
“Russia is fated to useless escapades, hastily embarked on and hastily
abandoned.” (Prince M. Sherbatov) “We are growing, but not ripening...” (P.
Chaadaev) “We were born well, but have grown very little.” (V. V. Rozanov)5
If the past corresponds to youth, the present to maturity, and the future to old
age, then Russia is at the same time youthful and senile, quietly skipping the
stage of maturity.
This
distinguishes Russia both from the great Eastern civilisations - in which the
present is fastened to the past by an unbreakable ethnic tradition - and from
the modern civilisations of the West - in which the present is fastened to the
future through uninterrupted technical progress. In Russia the past is fastened
directly to the future, as if
hanging under a missing, imperceptible present. Russian civilisation is
at the same time archaic and futuristic; this is its tragic rupture. But this
is also its special value for culturological study. In Russia the mechanisms of
renewal are naked; the future and past are joined directly, without the gentle
intervention of the present.
In their
semiotic works, Yuri Lotman and Boris Uspensky have already thoroughly analysed
the dualistic nature of Russian culture. Russian culture usually avoids the
third, neutral member in any intellectual opposition. Thus the gods of pagan
antiquity were either considered an impure force or else merged with images of
the Christian saints, but they were never evaluated neutrally. The attitude of
Russia to the West passed through many stages. Either a “new” Russia was
gaining ascendancy over an “ancient” West, or a “new” West was humiliating an
“ancient” Russia, but the two were hardly ever considered as existing on one
neutral plane. Likewise, Russian religious consciousness has always recognised
hell and heaven, but never purgatory. This general principle explains why the
present, in Russian culture, has been gently erased: it is the middling,
neutral member in the historical opposition “past - future.” In keeping with
the dualistic model of Lotman and Uspensky, Russian culture moves not through
smooth, negotiated oppositions, but through dramatic reversals.6
This is
confirmed by the most recent examples. That which yesterday was considered the
future - Communism, “the classless society” - has suddenly, unable to become the
present, become the past. Overnight it became a burdensome legacy or relic, to
be disposed of quickly. And visa versa, that which was considered the distant
past - the free market, capitalism, the constituent assembly, even monarchy and
class division - suddenly all these things were transferred to the desirable
future.
It would seem
that the most radical of all possible interpretations of the end of the 20th
century was the one offered by American sociologist Francis Fukuyama: the
collapse of Soviet Communism spells the world-wide triumph of Western
democracy, the end of global conflict, and, therefore, the “end of world
history.” But for Russia it was something even more radical than the end -
namely, a reversal or a turning upside-down. The “end” is, after all, the end.
It is a normal point in the temporal process, unavoidable after a certain stage
of development. However, in the consciousness of Russia, the collapse of
Communism signified not the end, but a re-arrangement of beginning and end, an incredible
anomaly in the temporal process. That which throughout the Soviet period was
perceived as the Communist future suddenly became the past, while the feudal
and bourgeois past started to draw near from the other side, from the eagerly
awaited future. The future and the past swapped places. The entire course of
history, once so confidently sketched by Marxism, was turned upside-down. The
shock affected not only Russia, but the whole of humanity. The whole world had
somehow been dragged into the Communist project, if only in opposition to it.
But for Russia, having lived through her own future, to suddenly find herself
in the arrier-garde of world-history, on the fringe of capitalism, or even on
the fringe of serfdom - such an explosive break with one’s own past hasn’t been
experienced, perhaps, by any modern culture.
At any moment
of history there must exist different epochs, as well as different nations. The
“society of the future,” in which the stationary, conservative elements of the
past were destroyed, was as sterile and dangerous for its inhabitants as the
“society of the past,” in which the elements of novelty, threatening to
tradition, were destroyed. Those middling, transitional elements, in which the
future and the past find their living connection, are called the present. In
the Russian language the word “present” has a double meaning: not just “now,” a
state belonging to certain moments of time, but “genuine,” “truthful,”
“real”... This is why the murderers of time, those who attempted to liberate
the future from the past and the past from the future, who attempted to destroy
the present, can be condemned with the pronouncement of Goethe:
Do not to look
into the distance, or into the past;
Only in the
present is happiness and delight.
And it is
fitting that a condemnation of “Chronocide” should be proclaimed in Weimar, the
town of Goethe, just as the universal condemnation of genocide was proclaimed
in another German town - Nuremberg.
3. The Utopia
of the Present. Time as Postponement.
However,
Goethe’s thought, taken in the context of Faust as a whole, acquires an ironic
meaning. To live only in the present is just one more - the most refined -
form of Chronocide. To halt the
moment, however wonderful it is, is to transform it into a corpse of eternity,
just as Faust himself, who desired such a cessation of time, falls down dead.
... I take my
joy, my highest moment this.
(Faust sinks
back into the arms of the Lemurs, who lay him upon the ground.)
It is well
known that Faust’s dream was realised only with the aid of Mephistopheles - the
spirit of negation. The frozen moment, the full and final “beauty of life,” is
death for the decrepit Faust. In his last moments he seems to hear the sound of
free labour on the free earth; in fact he is merely hearing the noise of the
spades with which, to the accompaniment of Mephistopheles’ laughter, demons are
digging his grave.
This Goethian
irony seems particularly appropriate to the age which marches under the banner
of “postmodernism.” Postmodernism is the most sophisticated form of burying
time, under the pretext of saving and immortalising it in countless repetitions
and postponements. If the theoreticians of tradition are bewitched by the
distant past, by some mythical golden age, the absolute beginning of
everything, then the theoreticians of postmodernism, disclaiming any kind of
beginning, celebrate the end and completion of everything in the here and now,
in the eternal present. Postmodernism is the frozen moment, a gigantically
inflated soap bubble of time, on the fine film of which all ages - past and future - are reflected. The
prototype of postmodernism is the exhausted Faust at the end of his global
travels, when, in the words of Mephistopheles,
Him would no
joys content, no fortune please,
And thus he
wooed his changing fantasies.
This wretched,
empty moment at the last
He sought, poor
wretch, to grasp and hold it fast.
Ihn sattigt
keine Lust, ihm ghugt kein Gluck,
So buhlt er
fort nach wechselnden Gestalten;
Den letzten, schlechten,
leeren Augenblick,
Der Arme
wunscht ihn festzuhalten.
This can be
taken as a parable about the fate of Western humanity. Initially, like Faust,
it could not quench its thirst for all that is endless and exceeds the limits
of time. But it finally surrendered to the charm of the passing moment, the
lack of substance, the play of “mercurial shadows.” All ideals previously
pursued by humanity are now reduced to a “shadow theatre” - stylish devices of
“meta-narration,” signs in a game of signs. Postmodern theory, of course,
realises perfectly well the secret irony of such a mentality, so similar to the
tragic conclusion of the Faustian project: “Then to the passing moment might I
say/ Thou art so beautiful, wilt thou not stay.” The frozen moment, the
arrested present - all this is only a parody of eternity. If Faust is the hero
of the modern age, then isn’t his companion Mephistopheles the genius of
postmodernism?
Mephistopheles:
What matters
our creative endless toil,
When, at a
snatch, oblivion ends the coil?
“It is by-gone”
- How shall this riddle run?
As good as if
things never had begun,
Yet circle
back, existence to possess:
I’d rather have
Eternal Emptiness.
Postmodernism,
at least in theory, not only terminates all former strivings (“everything is
finished”), but persistently asks: Was there a beginning at all? It abolishes
the very category of origin and originality. Any text becomes “ambiguous and
obscure” in the process of its deconstruction; the only things not cast into
doubt are the concepts of emptiness (“Ewig-Leere”), the metaphysics of absence,
suspension and eternal postponement.
Time itself in
deconstruction is interpreted as endless postponement. It is thus freed from
the past and the future, hung in a timeless emptiness, in a limitlessly
extended present. According to the founder of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida,
the activity of “différance” creates both a spatial and temporal
interval. But as a result any radical difference between time and space is
eliminated. In the words of Derrida, “In constituting itself, in dividing
itself dynamically, interval is what might be called spacing, the
becoming-space of time or the becoming-time of space (temporization). It is
this ... that I propose to call archi-writing, archi-trace, or différance.
Which (is) (simultaneously) spacing (and) temporization.”7
“Différer” in French means both “to differentiate” and “to postpone, to
defer, to slow down.” Taken as a definition of time, this transforms it into a
pure interval. Time is stretched or unfolded. It resembles space, insofar as
there is no qualitative difference between its moments, but only distance or
delay, during which nothing happens. “Différer in this sense is to
temporize, to take recourse, consciously or unconsciously, in the temporal and
temporizing mediation of a detour that suspends the accomplishment or
fulfilment of ‘desire’ or ‘will’ ...”8
Time is formed
by throwing its presence from one moment to the next. Between them is nothing
but a mechanical stretch, a tick of the clock and a turn of the hand.
Postponement means emptiness, qualitiless time, in which the next moment is
only the postponement of the previous. Such time is familiar to us from
Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, in which the coming of Godot is postponed
for an indefinite period of time. Postponement is a “difference” that functions
as an “identity.” Insofar as the same “something” is carried from one moment of
time to the next, time becomes self-identical and is eliminated as time. In its
place remains a pure interval that could be called time or space - they are
indistinguishable. Différance is transformed into indifférance.
Isn’t it paradoxical that the very same postponement which, according to
Derrida, establishes time, allows time to flow, also abolishes time,
transforming different moments into identical moments, the last one being
merely the postponement of the first. In his manifesto of postmodern theology
Mark Taylor, a follower of Derrida, depicts the kingdom of the “eternal
interval”: “The universality of the medium implies that what is intermediate is
not transitory and that what is interstitial is ‘permanent.’ Though always
betwixt ‘n’ between, the ‘eternal’ time of the middle neither begins nor ends.”9
This is why
the postmodern paradigm, developed
chiefly in the philosophy of Derrida, excludes time. If time is understood as
postponement, it turns out to be the postponement of time itself. In the
language of différance, “later” sounds like “never.” The girl says to
her father: “Let’s go for a walk!” He, comfortably seated on the sofa with a
book, replies: “Later!” The citizen says to the State: “When are we going to
end violence and guarantee everyone the right to life?” The State, swelling its
bureaucratic muscles, replies, “Later!” This “later,” penetrating the very
flesh and blood of our time, has become postmodernism. The very concept of
postmodernism itself, this vivacious sepulchre, this “all” after all, derives from the philosophy of defered
expectations. Neither history - the continuity of time - nor eschatology - the
end of time - fill this interval; they merely retain for themselves the
significance of pure postponement. All that remains for the people of
postmodernity is to wait for the coming of time with the same fear and hope
with which they once waited for the coming of eternity. “Postmodernism,”
however, is neither time nor eternity, but the metaphysics of pure repetition.
The very same moment of time that
is being postponed till later is reproduced in the form of “eternal
recurrence.” The girl repeats her question to her father, the citizen to the
state, the human being to God (“Godot”), but in the interlude nothing happens.
A similar motif
creeps in to the work of Derrida himself, when différance, in connection
with the philosophy of Nietzsche, is expounded as the myth of eternal
recurrence. “And on the basis of this unfolding of the same as
différance, we see the sameness of différance and repetition in
the eternal return.”10 “Eternal recurrence” is the most metaphysical
of all Nietzsche’s ideas, the price he paid for the attempt to destroy all
previous metaphysics. Endlessness - which, with the “death of God,” was
deprived of the movement of transcendence, the breakthrough into another realm
- took on the characteristics of self-identity. It eternally goes from itself and returns to itself -
because it has nowhere to go, because the path, open to the prophets of the
other kingdom, for it is closed. Différance, insofar as it works against
any metaphysic, against radical otherness, against transcendence, also ends up
as a form of self-identity. The “difference” in it only creates intervals
between the elements of repetition. If postponement is not temporal, if there
is nothing behind the frontier of postponement, it means that the moment
postponed will be repeated again and again. It can never complete itself and
give way to the next moment, just as a gramophone needle, removed from the
groove and caught in a trap of “postponement,” repeats the same musical phrase.
Postmodernism,
as is obvious from the very term, tries to stop the flow of historical time and
to build some kind of post-historical space. It acts as a “time-keeper,” in
which all the discursive practices, styles and strategies of the past will find
their echo, their imitative gesture, will be encompassed in the endless play of
signifying transcodes.) “If history has become spacial, then even her
repression has become spacial, and all those ideological mechanisms by means of
which we avoid thinking historically ...”11 Thus Frederic Jameson
describes the condition of the newest post-historicism, which transforms time
into the condition of space.
4. The
Resurrection of the Future.
Thus there are three
fundamental forms of Chronocide: the utopian obsession with the future (“the
happiness of coming generations”), the nostalgic obsession with the past (“The
Great Tradition”) and the postmodern amusement with the present (“the
disappearance of time in a synchronic play of significations”). The three
fundamental modes of time - future, past and present - are transformed into
three techniques of Chronocide the moment one of them is absolutised at the
expense of the others.
How can we
initiate the resurrection of time? That which dies first must, obviously, be
resurrected first. All catastrophic “timequakes” in the history of the world
have begun with the alienation of the future. It was removed from the course of
time and placed on a pedestal like a bloodthirsty idol. The ensuing envious and
vengeful reactions against “futurocracy” led to the birth of a new idolatry of
time. Now, on the eve of the grandiose celebrations of the new millennium, our
priority must be to establish confidence in the future. We must rectify it,
like a dislocated joint in the living chain of time. Are we really going to
celebrate the beginning of the new century with a curse on the future; will our
festivities be double-spirited - a celebratory cup filled with the same poison
that has cankered the hopes of this passing century?
Obsession with
“the future” has been the great seduction and curse of the twentieth century,
the legacy of nineteenth century optimism and progressivism. But this is no
reason to poison the twenty-first century with the scepticism of the twentieth
century. “From whence danger; from thence salvation.” For many decades
Communism appeared to be the inevitable future of all humanity; countless
victims were sacrificed on its alter. It is still considered indecent, maybe
even shameful, to talk about the future. It is supposedly tainted by complicity
with “the occupants of the future,” with utopians and totalitarians, who in the
name of the future inflicted violence on the present. However, now is the time
to recognise that the future is innocent. It deceived all those who tried to
possess it. It was not that bloodthirsty divinity for which it was taken by the
priests of the revolution. On the contrary, the future is the overthrower of
all divinities and idols, even those erected in its honour. The fact that the
“Communist future” has remained in the past means that the future has been
purged of one more spectre. This kind of purification - or demythologisation -
of time is the special function of the future. Now the future is advancing on
humanity again, this time not with an exclamation mark but with a question
mark.
The epoch in
which we live, the epoch “after the death of the future,” does not just abolish
the future; it restores its purity anew. Now, after all utopias and
anti-utopias, we need - maybe for the first time in history - to plumb the
whole depth and deceptiveness of this purity. This is not the purity of the
tabula rasa, on which we can write anything we want, fulfil any grandiose
project. Rather, the future will have the purity of a rubber, erasing from the
tabula rasa the clear lines of any design, reducing all projects to a blur -
the dim remnant of an evaporated utopia. A new vision is being revealled to us
- a vision of the future as a great ironist. It will never will allow itself to
become objectivised, to become ameanable to strict analysis and prognosis.
This refers us
to Bakhtin, who wrote about the impossibility of finalising history from inside
history itself - and about the future as the comic exposure of such attempts to
cease what is ceaseless. “... Nothing definitive in the world has yet taken
place; the last word of the world, about the world, has not yet been spoken;
the world is open and free; everything is still to come and will always be
still to come. This, you see, is the purifying meaning of ambivalent laughter.”12
This, one might add, is the
purifying, idol-destroying meaning of the future. The future is the
laughter-filled openness of being, in which all finalised forms disappear. It
is significant that “future” in the Russian language has the same root as
“being,” whereas “past” and “present” are formed from entirely different
concepts: “to pass” and “to stand.” The most mysterious thing about being is
its futuriority, its ceaselessness and its tirelessness, its otherness and
outsidedness in relation to all existing things.
Doesn’t my
paean to the future sound like a new utopian heresy? The point is that in order
for the postmodern critic of utopia to overcome utopianism, the standpoint of
anti-utopianism or even post-utopianism is necessary but insufficient. We must
reawaken love for the future, not as a promised land, but as a state of
promise. This is not that love which was bequeathed to us by Chernyshevsky in
his novel, What shall we do? “Love the future! Bring from it into the present
as much as you can carry!” The future here is represented as a ready-prepared
storehouse of joys, which are only waiting to be carried into the present.
However, the only future that deserves love is one from which it is impossible
to carry anything into the present, because it advances with the same speed
that the present retreats into the past. Despite the fact that usually we say
“the future is advancing,” it retreats every moment to a place we can never
reach.
It is partly
language itself that is guilty of the fact that the future appears to be
running over us, crushing us under its wheels. We say that the future is “advancing” (nastupaet), as it might be
said about infantry. In the English language this association is not active;
there the future is “coming” or “approaching” like a train towards the station
of the present, from whence it will move on into the past. In Russian, the
future conducts itself aggressively.
It would be
more accurate to say that the future has two mutually exclusive sides, two
diverging frontiers: the future of the coming event and the coming of the
future itself. It is well known that as one moves forwards that which is
distant becomes close, but distance itself moves on ahead. What is the future:
the approaching object or the retreating distance? The point is that the future
is always double-faced, like an ironical utterance where “yes” means “no.” The
future is at once approaching and fleeing. It is both an easily available whore
and an eternally distant virgin. This is why we are attracted to the future.
For the capacious human heart, it unites the ideals of Sodom and the Madonna. A
shamelessly exposed loin, which everyone is free to invade: - and a shining
innocent visage, melting into the mist. One future approaches swiftly and
physically surrounds us, becoming present. It is summoned by utopians of all
ages, impatiently demanding its arrival. The other future retreats from us with
the same speed that the first future approaches us.
It was
precisely such an ever-retreating future that the philosopher Semen Frank
described in his book Unfathomability: “We know nothing definite about the
future. The future is always the great x of our life - an unknown, impenetrable
mystery.”13 Just as the future is allegedly algebraic rather than
arithmetical, so we approach the future not as a precise quantity, but as an
unknown. We know that winter always comes after autumn, and summer after
spring. But do winter and summer belong the future? No, they are elements of a
repeating cycle. They appear as future only in relation to the previous phases
of the cycle, and thus as past in relation to its following phases. The future
as such cannot not be construed a cycle, as a rhythm of repetitions.
Any event
appears at first as future, then as present, and finally as past: it is played
in all three registers of time. This is why the event is always multi-coloured
and three-dimensional; we perceive it from the front, the side, and from the
back. But it does not follow from this that we can muddle up the colours
themselves. Communism, traditionalism and postmodernism suffer from
colour-blindness in relation to time. It seems to them that the future can
become present, or that the past can become the future, or that the present is
the eternally postponed future. In reality, the event approaches us from the
future and rushes into the past, but the future itself never approaches. It it
is impossible to take it, to possess it, or to exhaust it. The future is like a
cannon; it fires the event towards us, but it itself rolls back.
The period we
are entering is no longer a period after something: post-communism,
postmodernism, post-industrialism, post-structuralism. It is rather the era of
“proto-” of the birth of some new
cultural formation. When we make a sketch we use rubber almost as much as we do
pencil. This is why there is now such a great demand for an unknown future, a future
that blurs the exactness of our projects rather than accomplishing them.
“Proto” does not presage or determine the future, but softens the present and
imparts to any script the character of a draft, raw and unfinished. “Proto” is
a new, non-coercive attitude to the future, in which the mode of “perhaps”
replaces the former “must be” or “yes, will be.” “Proto” is an age of changable
projects, which do not submit themselves to our single reality, but multiply
alternative possibilities. The future is not written under the dictation of
utopia. On the contrary, it erases its cruel features and transforms it into a
“proto-utopia,” a sketch of one of many futures. The future is a soft form of
negation, the bluring of all signs, the dispersion of all meanings.
As opposed to
the avant-garde or utopian project, consciously rushing into the future so as
to reconstruct it, “proto-” emphasises the unaccountability and the
unpredictability of the future. The future acts in the same way as the
unconscious of Freud or the language of Lacan. The future is as unpredictable
as it is unchangeable; it is the general sphere of otherness; it is itself
“other” from all that we have been given in experience, all that we have come
into contact with. Language none the less exists, the unconscious none the less
exists, and we have been given certain methods of deciphering them, an (albeit
somewhat imperfect) grammar. But the future is a language without grammar, an
unconscious without dreams, pure nothingness. It inescapably becomes everything
so as again and again to remain nothing.
5. Not
revolution, but potentiation
To restore
trust in the future means to find a new model of development that is in harmony
with the passage of time. That fatal substitute, which laid the foundations of revolutionary-utopian
thinking and afterwards initiated the chain reaction of traditionalism and
postmodernism, was first and formost a metaphysical substitute. According to
that conception, the present appears as a realm of ideas and ideals; the future
as the realm of their realisation. The present is the kingdom of possibilities;
the future is the process of their realisation.
European
metaphysics created the kingdom of general ideas. But it had its other side in
European history, the aspiration of which was to bring these abstract ideas
back down to earth, to incarnate them in political, moral and legal
institutions. Nothing attracted to the European citizen as much as abstraction.14
In this sense history and metaphysics can be considered as two moments in the
same continually recurring movement of ideas. The idea was abstracted from real
life (the metaphysical act) so as to become involved with a new force in the
transformation of that reality (the historical act). The ideas of freedom, of
equality, of national and racial greatness, of religious exclusivity, actively
influenced the course of history. The very abstraction of these ideas made them
attractive, demanded their involvement in history.
Even the most
radical oppositional movements, movements that threatened to blow up European
civilisation, changed its mentality very little. On the contrary, they
intensified it and took it to extremes. We all know the role played by the cult of abstract ideas - under
the names of “ideology” and “propaganda” - in Communist Russia and Nazi
Germany. The more these ideas were separated from life, the more persistently
they demanded embodiment. The slogans proclaimed in May 1968 from the student barricades
in Paris - “All power to the imagination!” “Heaven immediately!” - were an act
of profound self-expression on the part of European civilisation. The
imagination was called to power, to action. Everything dreamed in sleep and in
waking must be realised. “Make human everything impersonal, Fulfil all
unaccomplished dreams!”15
This is how
possibility was linked to reality in European consciousness; possibilities were
taken from reality in order to link them to it again. “Realise your
possibilities; fulfil them here and now!” - this imperative was given power in
social and individual consciousness. Even religious consciousness hoped for the
resurrection of the dead and the millennial kingdom here, on this earth, so as
to “make human everything impersonal” and to “fulfil all unaccomplished
dreams.”
However, this
model, which has faithfully served the development of Western civilisation over
many centuries, refuses to work any longer. There is no enthusiasm for either
metaphysical abstraction or for historical involvement. At the end of the
twentieth century it has become popular to talk not only about the end of
metaphysics but also about the end of history. In fact these two ends are one
end - the intersection of two strait lines stubbonly advancing towards one
another. In his well known work, The End of History? Frances Fukayama came to
the conclusion that all monumental ideas (fascist, communist, religious
fundamentalist) had become exhausted in the face of competition with the
liberal-democratic idea. However, the essence of the matter is not that some
ideas have been displaced by others, but in that ideology itself has been
exhausted as an active historical force. We are seeing the end of the
metaphysical production of history, in which ideas, initially abstracted from
reality, were then realised in it.
J. F. Leotard,
in his critique of J. Habermas, stresses that the great European project of
Enlightenment was not realised at all.
This is not because it was abandoned; it was destroyed precisely in the course of its own realisation
- in Auschwitz and Kolyma. “Tending to realisation ... the Idea (of freedom, of
‘Enlightenment,’ of socialism and so forth) possesses a legitimising force to
the extent that it is universal. ... My argument is that the modern project
(the realisation of universality) was not abandonned or forgotten, but
destroyed, ‘liquidated’.”16 The precise historical moment at which
the project destroyed itself, at which the ironical dialectic of Enlightenment
was fulfilled, marked the beginning of a new movement. Liberal-democratic
society no longer promotes abstract ideas to be drawn into the service of
society. Here another model operates: the incessent production of new
possibilities that do not demand realisation, that are valuable and efficacious
in themselves despite remaining as possibilities.
As long the
future is contemplated in the indicative or imperative mood, as a “will be” or
a “must be,” the present will inevitably be coerced by the future. The Russian
language, which forms “future” from “will be,” is the basis of this tendency to
conceive of the future in the indicative mood. But if thought refuses to follow
language obediently, but rather struggles with its aberrations (doesn’t the
task of thought consist in this resistance to language and its treacherous
promptings?), then future can be imagined as an realm of opportunity, as an
incompleteness that has value in itself. The future is not something that will
be (as it was thought of by plan, manifesto and utopia), but something that may
be. A possibility never comes
alone, but only in the form of doubling and multiplying possibilities.
Possibilities clash and yet do not mutually exclude one another. A possibility
that excludes all others - this is
already an inevitable, resolved fact; even more than a fact - a necessity. As
long as we speak about the future in the singular it is binding and inevitable;
it is inscribed in the indicative and imperative mood. The future in the
subjunctive mood is an open fan of futures, of diverging possibilities.
I will remind
you that until the twentieth century the word “culture” was used only in the
singular case, in the sense of a norm or a model. The concept of cultural
pluralism emerged slowly, but at the end of our century the plural has begun to
prevail in the use of this term - in anthropology, history, ethnography and in
“cultural research.” At the turn of the twenty-first century, won’t a similar metamorphosis take place with
the concept of “future?” Won’t the
binding singular - something that will necessarily “be” - be transformed into
the plural - a multitude of “maybes?” Discredited by utopian ideologies and
totalitarian regimes, the concept of the “future” can be justified for the
future only as the coexistence and interaction of different futures.
The twentieth
century has exhibited two main models of development. The first is the
revolutionary one. This was the
culmination of many centuries of European history, even though it came to
fruition in Eastern Europe and Asia. This model can be described as “the
realisation of possibilities,” their narrowing to one desired and binding
reality. Revolution is a natural consequence of the type of mentality developed
in the West, according to which history is a succession of realised possibilities,
grasped first in mind and imagination and then incarnated in life. In this
model the real is sacrificed to the possible; some possibilities are cut down
and sacrificed to others. Attempted by Soviet and International Communism, this
revolutionary model, as is well known, had rather unfortunate results.
However, from
approximately the middle of the twentieth century, in the countries of the
West, a new model has begun to operate, allowing those countries to avoid the
horrors of revolutionary violence. This new model developed largely as a
reaction against Fascism and Communism, which dragged humanity into a world war
for the partition of the “predestined future.” The basis of this new historical
model is a development not from the possible to the real, but from the real to
the possible. This erects a barrier against the time when from a number of
possibilities only one was chosen, binding on the whole of humanity - and the
past and the present were sacrificed to it.
The process of
opening the present to the multiplicity of futures can be called
“potentiation.” Potentiation is a raising of the degree of pontentiality in
reality itself, a process of transforming facts into probabilities, theories
into hypothoses, assertions into suggestions, necessities into possibilities.
All modern reality is made of such “potentialities.” It is becoming more and
more conditional. It is being transformed from “is” into “if,” from “to be”
into “might be.”
In the next
three chapters some aspects of the new model - and how they are realised in the
social, cultural and ethical fields - will be sketched.
6. Society.
Let us recall
the well-known expression which is often applied to the countries of the “first
world:” “the land of opportunity.” These are not abstract opportunities, but
the economic foundation of modern society. Here we can point to the extensive
system of credit and insurance that translates everyday life into the
subjunctive mood. I live on resources which I could earn: this is credit. I pay
for services which I might need: this is insurance. The modern West is the
civilisation of possibilities in the sense that here they penetrate the very
texture of everyday existence. I do not possess what I possess, but what I
might possess if ... (in these brackets might be put any condition of life:
employment or retirement, marriage or divorce, etc.) Credit and insurance
companies busy themselves with the precise estimation of all my life-chances,
beginning with my health, age and education. They deal not only with me as I
am, but with all my possible future states. Insurance and credit are two
correlated forms of potentiality. In insurance I pay in advance for any
potential accident: sickness, car crashes, unemployment, death or disability.
In credit I am paid potential forms of well-being: a house, a car, a television
etc. Both positive and negative sides of life appear entirely conditional from
the viewpoint of economics, because economics is based on statistics and the
estimation of probabilities, not on the singular and unrepeatable fact.
For people
accustomed to a non-western style of life, with its hard realities and its more
binding norms, it is very difficult to switch into this game of possibilities, where
every “if” has its own “that” and every “that” its own “if.” Nothing exists
just so, in the indicative mood, but everything skates on the edge of “as if.”
One possibility opens onto another, and the whole of reality consists of
alternating possibilities which are hardly ever realised in themselves.
The same
happens in social and political life. Insofar as traditionalist, authoritarian
and totalitarian societies subordinate the life of their citizens to a strict
regimantation, then Western democracy is right to call itself “the free
society.” Its citizens are free in their choice of rulers, occupations, places
of travel and so forth. But the “free society” and the “society of opportunity”
characterise two different aspects of Western democracy. Social and political
freedom is opposed to despotism and coecion; it inhabits the same plane of
meaning as “the suppression of freedom” and “political repression.” This is why
the definition of Western society as free has started to look outdated,
especially after the collapse of Communist regimes in Europe. Additionally, at
the structural level, Western society is not free at all; it is much more
harshly constrained by internal economic and technological relations than
totalitarian societies. This explains the fact of its amazing historical
stability. But another definition of Western society - not “freedom” but
“potentiality” - has a more important meaning.
Potentiality,
in distinction from freedom, is
not a call for the real forces of rule; it is the transition to another,
conditional-hypothetical, mode of existence. The voter is free when he has the
right to nominate and vote for his canditate, - this is the tradition, let us
say, of American democracy. But where should we locate the role of the so
called “primaries” and polls? These are regularly carried out around the
country in anticipation of elections. They represent a hypothetical model of
the election that nevertheless seriously influences the final result. American
observers point out that the introduction of polls significantly influenced the
election system in the USA, transforming it into a kind of multilevel
spectacle, where each conditional assumption depends on the previous ones,
where one stage-set is pushed inside another. It is no accident that in America
the popular expression of Bismark, “politics is the science of the possible” -
here transformed into “politics is the art of the possible” (R.A. Butler) - has
taken on an additional meaning. Politics is not only the art of balancing
possibilities and realising possibilities, but also the art of “possibilising” reality, giving it a
conditional character.
I am by no
means inclined to consider this
model of development as an “ideal,” but the point is that the very catagory of
the ideal will for a long time be compromised by the old
progressive-revolutionary model. We are not talking about an ideal, but about
the ever greater unreality of the Western style of life, which increasingly
empowers “as if” and “may be.” The “dictatorship of the possible” -
potentiocracy - has its negative aspects. These include the power of credit,
insurance, and advertising companies, trading with the “thin air” of
possibilities. In advertisements, for example, things are separated from their
direct “thingness” and represented as symbols of human possibilities. Some
drink not only quenches thirst, it makes it possible to inhale the aroma of the
jungle, to exchange a humid kiss with your lover, to see the sea through the
prism of a frosted glass ... The advertisement doesn’t lie, doesn’t
misrepresent the facts (that would be illegal and unprofitable), but it puts a
seductive construction on the facts. We can complain of the primitive nature of
such advertisement, but it is no more primitive than the object advertised; on
the contrary, it multiplies its aspects, creates from it an illusion of other
life. The advertisement is the lowest form of art, but it is the highest form
of object-trading reality, a method of magically transporting it into the world
of “as if.”
The “opportunity
society” is also the information society. In it are produced and consumed not
only objects - units of physical reality - but also texts - units of
information. It has become more or less a truism that in the post-industrial
era capital has given way to information as the basic social resource. But from
this follows a far from trivial conclusion. The value of any communication is
proportionate to the unexpectedness of what is communicated. It is a fluid
quantity; it increases to the extent that the probability of the events
communicated diminishes. Naturally, the information society is keen to increase
the volume of information which it possesses, because this is its main source
of wealth - the tendency is as unarguable as the law the growth of capital or
the increase of profit. But what is the growth of information, if not an
increase in the probabilistic character of social life? Information grows to
the extent that the world grows less predictable, consists of increasingly
improbable events. This is the root of the cult of novelty, the striving of
every person to be, in at least something, original and “unpredictable.” This
is the main condition of the development of the information society. In this
sense, the expressions “the opportunity society” and “the information society”
are synonyms; it is precisely the abundance of possibilities that is realised
in one of these informational events.
In developed
societies the accent of meaning is transferred from reality to possibility,
because a life filled with possibilities is perceptibly richer and more
valuable than a life lived on the plain of actual existence. In the final
analysis, the reality of human life is limited by the parameters that belong to
man as a generic creature, and are more or less similar in all civilisations
(the maintenance of the organs of perception, of life expectancy and so forth).
It is impossible to eat more than one is capable of eating; it is impossible to
see more than one is capable of seeing; and these limits are close to being
reached in the developed countries of the West, at least for a significant part
of the population. But the richness of life depends more on the multiplication
of its possibilities than on their fulfilment. Reality is constant in its
significant denominators, but possibility is a continually increasing vector of
civilisation. The development of civilisation by one unit of reality results in
a still greater increase of
possibilities. In this lies the poetic side of progress, normally screened by
its practical side.
7. Culture.
It is well
known that the principle of a probabilistic universe found a home for itself in
the strictest and most fantastic science of the twentieth century - physics. At
the base of physical reality lies not “is” but “might be” - a special curve of
possible motion and mass-energy for each particle, which altogether form an
undulating graph of probability. Coming from natural science to the humanities,
we observe not only the action of probabilistic laws, but the growth of the
same probabilistic tendencies in culture. This can be observed in the fate of
different genres.
So, M. Bakhtin,
distinguishing the novel from the epic, comes to the conclusion that if in the
epic necessity prevails, then in the novel possibility prevails. “The epic
world … is fixed, closed and unchanging - in its factuality, in its meaning and
in its value.”17 Not only does the hero of the epic act in the
sphere of necessity, but the author himself pictures the epic reality as the
only true one, unarguable and absolute in its value and factuality. “A person
depicted in a highly distanced genre is a person of the absolute past and the
distant image. ... All his potential, all his possibilities, are fully realised
in his external social position, in his fate ... He has already become all that
he could be, and he could be nothing other than what he has already become.”18
The hero of the novel, on the other hand, presents himself as pure
potential that can never be realised in any external state, let alone frozen in
the “distant image” of legend and teaching. “He is not fully incarnated in
existing socio-historical flesh ... The reality of the novel is one of many
possible realities. It is contingent, accidental, and contains in itself other
possibilities.“19 The hero of the novel is caught in various
situations which try “embody” him, to thrust upon him one or another social or
psychological role, but the novel’s action consists of the hero’s constant
refusal to identity with these situations and with himself. He is pure
possibility; he does not yield to any kind of realisation; he always preserves
his “may be” in relation to all the subterfuges and pretensions of existence
(let us recall Pechorin or Pier Bezukhov).
Another even
more probabilistic genre is the essay. It has its roots in the epoch of the
Renaissance, of Montaigne. Montaigne, for the first time, tried to talk
simultaneously about everything and nothing. He had no prepared theme, genre or
idea, but as it were tried himself out in this and in that. If the novel and
short-story exist in the sphere of artistic illusion, if the scientific article
and philosophical tractatus lay claim to logical strictness and irrefutability,
and if the diary and chronicle presuppose truth of exposition and authenticity
of fact, then the essay plays with the possibilities of all those genres while
conforming to none of them. Montaigne wrote: “I love words that soften the
bravery of our claims and introduce into them some kind of moderation: ‘may
be,’ ‘in all likelihood,’ ‘partly,’ ‘so they say,’ ‘I think,’ and so forth.”20
“May be” - the formula of the essay - refers, in distinction to the novel, not
only to represented reality, but also to the very methods of representation.
The essay is a kind of “meta-hypothesis,” encompassing narrative art,
philosophy, science, the diary, the confession and the historical document as
trial forms of consciousness. According to Robert Musil, author of A Man
without Qualities, essayism, as the creative credo of the twentieth century, is
the art of “living hypothetically.” It transforms every culturally fixed role
into one of the possibilities of authentic existence. Man has no qualities
given to him by nature, but there does exist a “quintessence of human
possibilities,” a “porous subtext of many other meanings.”
Not only
different kinds and genres of culture, but culture as a whole is understood in
the twentieth century as one of the possibilities of multicultural and
transcultural existence. Modern man is no longer locked in the single cultural
reality of his birth and upbringing. He stands at the cross-roads of different
ethnic, historical and professional cultures, each of which presents itself as
a possibility of surmounting the obsessional complexes, manias and phobias of
the “native” culture. But they can also appear as mere possibilities, with
which he can amuse himself, but in
which he cannot be wholly fulfilled.
This
“concentration of the possible,” in my view, defines the peculiarity of the
newest cultural trend. Works of architecture reveal a plurality of historical
styles, yet not one of them is fully developed. Books are written that contain
the possibility of many books; buried in them one finds a whole variety of
readings, a model for the assembly of many texts (A hundred thousand billion
poems by the French poet Raymond Keno, the novels Games of Hopscotch and 62.
Model for Assembly by the Argentinean Julio Kortasar, Hussar Dictionary by the
Yugoslavian Milorad Pavic and so forth). A computer “hypertext” invites many variations
of reading, because it allows one
to move freely from one fragment to another in any order. The most prominent
example, which we can here only touch upon, is the computerised “as-if reality”
(virtual reality) of the nineteen-nineties. “Virtual” spaces - towns, museums,
clubs, universities - are formed on electronic networks, creating a whole new
dimension of communicative experience.
As has already
been said in connection with the economy, credit and insurance are cast in the
subjunctive mood. They are no less effective for the fact that they buy and
sell “emptiness,” pure possibility, and not a real product. We can now add that
the “circulation of possibilities” also defines the current trajectory of the
arts.
8. Ethics.
Ethics has traditionally
been considered as a sphere of normative judgements. Its statutes were
formulated as duties, and were addressed to all representatives of the human
race. The most convenient and generally accepted form of ethical judgement was
the imperative: “Do not kill,” “Do not fornicate,” “Do not do to others what
you would not have them do to you.” and so forth. The “practical philosophy” of
Kant, the most influential doctrine in Western ethical thought, is summed up in
the “categorical imperative”: “... act only in accordance with such a maxim,
that being guided by it you can at the same time will that it might become a
general law.”21
It is obvious
that the imperative form of ethical injunctions is connected to their
generality. The general in relation to the individual appears as duty. This is
why the first and last words of the Kantian imperative are indissolubly linked
: “... act” is in the imperative mood because you must act in such a way that
the maxim of your action might become a “general law.”
But the general
should not be confused with universal. The universal is not something
abstracted from the individual but contained within him. Therefore it appears
not as obligation, but as possibility. We can imagine a universal ethics
constructed in the subjunctive, and not in the imperative mood; an ethics of
possibility, and not of duty.
A critical
introduction to such an ethics has already been supplied by Nietzsche: “If we
investigate the matter thoroughly, it is with such naiveté that they
say: ‘man must be thus or so!” Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types,
a luxuriance of extravagant games and changing forms; but some miserable
hack-moralist says: “No! Man must be different!”22 But if we agree
with Nietzsche that man is, and remains what he is, in reality, in this
“enchanting wealth of types,” then any possibility of ethical judgement
disappears. It is not enough simply to remove duty from ethics, because
“reality” in itself is completely void of ethics. It admits of description, but
not of evaluation. This is why Nietzsche’s rebellion against duty in the name
of “life as it is” so often slides into a rebellion against morality as such,
with its innate “anti-naturalism.” “We immoralists!” Ethics cannot be a mere
justification of existence, a description of man as he is. Berdyaev saw
something positive in the moral crisis enveloping the world in the twentieth
century, namely “the transition from a consciousness for which morality is
obedience to general laws, to a consciousness for which morality is the
individual’s creative task.”23 If morality does not call man to
duty, it can still call man to possibilities.
Ethics enters
the world of possibility at its most basic level - the ABC of etiquette. To be
specific, speech-etiquette consists of avoiding, by any means, the imperative
mood and replacing it with the subjunctive. Instead of, “Pass me the water!” -
“Could you pass me the water?” This might sound like a pure formality, but the
form in this case is highly significant. Polite people do not burden each other
with their needs, but delicately grant each other the opportunity of satisfying
them. I need you to do this or that, but I do not force you to do it; I grant
you the opportunity of doing it of your own free will. The necessity which we
experience in ourselves is presented to the other person as a possibility,
which he is free to realise or not to realise. The demands of some people are
transformed into the possibilities of others - this is the alchemy of courtesy.
Etiquette is the emancipatory priority of possibility over necessity in
relations between people.
One might
object that the highest ethical considerations should have nothing in common
with the rules of courtesy. It might be gauche to demand a glass of water from
a close friend, but it is not at all shameful to demand from humanity seas of
blood in the name of such universal moral principles as equality, justice and
so forth. It is doubtful, however, that higher ethics was established in
contradiction to basic etiquette. It is more likely that it represents an
outgrowth, an elaboration of etiquette. If the initial moral intuition consists
in concealing ones own necessity in the form of another’s opportunity, then the
essence of ethics has already been defined as a widening of another person’s
sphere of opportunity. Courtesy is only a formality so long as it hides its own
interest under the inviting gesture - “couldn’t you?” The transition to higher
ethics doesn’t destroy the rules of courtesy; it merely removes their formality.
The possibility we give to others ceases to be a sophisticated means for the
satisfaction of our own desires and becomes an end in itself - an opening up of
possibilities for another. The other appears to me in the fullness of his
spiritual, creative and emotional possibilities, and if I assist in their
development, formal courtesy between us has grown into a truly meaningful
ethical relationship. Even though
the rules of courtesy have existed for many centuries, their prototypical
significance for the new ethics has become clear only now, with the collapse of
imperative morality. Morality consists of the possibilities we create for one
another.
..............
In our social
and spiritual life we observe a continual process, diametrically opposed to the
process known as “realisation.” Even the past, which undoubtedly was what it
was, involuntarily allows the possible into its own completed world. Every
fact, to the extent that it is distanced from us, becomes a hypothesis. The
field is opened for interpretation, for a multitude of “what would be ifs.” We
begin to wonder about that which before we knew. Yesterday’s fact is
transformed into today’s hypothesis.
In the words of
Max Weber, “the question, what might have happened if Bismarck, for example, had
not decided to start a war, is by no means ‘empty.’ The conclusion that the
absence or alteration of one historical fact in the complex of historical
conditions might have led to a change in the course of history seems extremely
important for the establishment of ‘the historical significance’ of that fact.”24
History, from the point of view of the historian, is not only that which was,
but also that which could have been, or else the individual fact loses its
meaning. From this derives the view of history itself as of a process of
accumulating possibilities; every epoch absorbs the unrealised possibilities of
the previous epoch. In every epoch there are more possibilities than in the
previous, even though the volume and measure of real time remains the same:
day, year, century...
From this
observation derives the strange feeling that historical reality is becoming
increasingly transparent, that it is being permeated by bubbles of air. Arnold
Toynbee happily named this process “etherealisation” - the rarefaction of the
material substrata of history, its transmutation into a more spiritual,
ethereal condition. If the creative Word, by which the world was made, is a
verb, a word-act, then history represents the conjugation of this Verb, its
translation from the indicative into the subjective mood.
At the present
time the actual world still seems to be the point of departure for most kinds
of human action, which are directed towards understanding and changing reality.
But gradually the signalling, informational, computerised universe is
swallowing up the universe of facts, making possible things that were formerly
impossible. This process represents a change in the modality of the world. At
the beginning of the new historical era we are confronted with a superabundance
of being, with its translation into the mode of “if.” The subjunctive case
represents a huge sphere of new spiritual experience, new delicacy, tolerance
and intellectual generosity. It opens up the way to a peaceful “ingrowth” of
the future into the present. The future even penetrates our understanding of
the past; it allows us to see the past as a multitude of alternatives. It
allows us to grasp the meaning of historical events, significant only to the
extent that they “might not have been” or “might have been different.”
Thus in the new
model the future is not “liberated” from the present or from the past, but
endows them with the richness of its own meaning-creating freedom.
October 1998
Transl.
Edward Skidelsky
Footnotes:
*This essay was submitted for the International Essay Prize
Contest set up by Lettre International, the European literary magazine, and Weimar 1999 - Cultural City of
Europe in cooperation with Goethe-Institut. The topic: "Liberating the
Future from the Past? Liberating the Past from the Future?" The ten
winning essays, this one among them, were selected out of approximately 2,500
submissions from 123 countries in the anonymous process of evaluation by seven national juries (English, German,
French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic) and the international jury of writers and scholars.
1 “About our
journal. How we understand tradition.” Milyi angel (Fair Angel). Esoteric
Review. Moscow, Artogia, 1991, vol. 1, p. 1. This journal, edited by A. Dugin,
is the theoretical organ of the Russian and international “conservative
revolution.”
2 Alexander Dugin. “The Riddle of
Socialism.” Elements, No. 4, 1993, p. 17
3 This is an untranslatible
play on words. The Russian word is “oboroten’,” which means “werewolf,” but
also carries the implication of “reversal.”
4 Material on the Physiology
of Russian Society. Russians’ opinion of themselves. Collected by K.
Ckalkovsky. S. Pb, typography A. S. Souvorin, 1904, p. 6
5 Ibid, pp. 39, 10, 21
6 Yury Lotman and Boris Uspensky,
The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History. Ed. A. D. Nakhimovsky and A. S.
Nakhimovsky. Ithica & London: Cornell University Press, 1985, pp. 31, 33,
63.
7 Différance, in, Jacques Derrida,
Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass. University of Chicago Press, 1982, p.
13
8 Ibid, p. 8.
9 Mark C. Taylor, “Erring: A Postmodern
A/theology”, in From Modernism to Postmodernism. An Anthology, ed. Lawrence
Cahoone, Oxford, 1996, pp. 526-527
10 Derrida, op. cit., p. 17
11 Fredric Jameson,
Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press,
1993, p. 374
12 M. Bakhtin, Problems in Dostoevsky’s
Poetics, 4.M., “Sovietskaya Rossiya,” 1979, p. 193
13 S. L. Frank, “Unfathomability,” in
Sochineniya. M., “Pravda,” 1990, p.216
14 This is a play on words. The Russian
word for abstraction, otvlechyunnost’, derives from the Russian word for
attract, privlekat’.
15 Alexander Blok, “Oh, I
would live life to extremes ...”
16 Jean-Francoise Lyotard, “Zametki na
polyakh povestvobanii,” Kommentarii, No. 11, 1997, p.215-216. [J.-F. Lyotard,
“Apostille aux recits,” Le Postmoderne explique aux enfants, Galilee, 1986.]
17 M. M. Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel,” in
Literaturno-kriticheskie statyi, Moscow, “Khudozhestvennaya literatura,” 1986,
p. 405.
18 Ibid, p. 421
19 Ibid, p. 424
20 Michel Montaigne, Opyti, Moscow,
“Nauka,” 1973, vol. 3, ch. 11, pp. 233-234
21 I. Kant, Collected Works, vol. 4,
Moscow, 1965, p. 260
22 Fredrick Nietzsche, The Twilight of the
Idols, or How to Philosophise with a Hammer, vol. 2, Moscow, “Mysl,” 1990, p.
576
23 Nikolai Berdyaev, “The Meaning of
Creativity,” Collected Works, Paris, YMCA-Press, 1985, vol. 2, p. 299
24 Max Weber, “Critical Studies in the
Logic of Science and Culture,” Selected Works, Moscow, “Progess,” 1990, pp.
465, 466-467.