Charms of the Cynical Reason

Tricksters in Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5772213
AutoresMark Lipovetsky (0000-0001-9402-6583, Brighton Hospital, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Fecha de publicación2010-12-01
Open AccessSí
TipoBOOK
RevistaCharms of the Cynical Reason (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialAcademic Studies Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/j.ctt21h4wjt
OpenAlexW643509340
ISBN9781618118509
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas35

Beuys, or Sacha Baron cohen-to confirm this self-evident thesis.it is telling that in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno use odysseus, an archetypal image of the trickster, for their characterization of the "instrumental reason" produced by modernity.They detect the prototype of the modern reason's main principle-"the adaptation of the ratio to its contrary" (67)-in the trickster's play with numerous, mutually annihilating, identities: "...the subject odysseus denies his own identity, which makes him a subject, and himself alive by imitating the amorphous.[...] He acknowledges himself to himself by denying himself under the name of nobody; he saves his life by losing himself."(60, 67)A more optimistic interpretation of modern reason-yet also through reference to the trickster myth-comes from historian Yuri Slezkine.This scholar coins the term "mercurianism" after Mercury (or Hermes)-the major trickster god of the Greco-roman pantheon-to designate certain qualities demanded by the epoch of modernity, qualities traditionally associated with internal strangers, service nomads, professional "others" (such as merchants, craftsmen, middle men, entrepreneurs, and actors, for example)-in other words, manipulators who did not sell their own goods, but only their knowledge and (frequently tricksterish) skills.Slezkine demonstrates this function through the example of russian Jews, though, as he states, it is not less relevant to Gypsies, the chinese (outside china), Armenians (outside Armenia), and the Parsis in india: 9 This comparison follows in accordance to the observations by and

Ancient history · Political science · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Soviet and Russian History