Artemy Magun
Biographic Data
| ID | 1015298 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Artemy Magun |
| GIVEN NAMES | Artemy |
| FAMILY NAME | Magun |
| SIGNATURE | MAGUN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | European University at Saint Petersburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1665-3391 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Taking seriously the conservative challenge
A Political Theology of Sortition
Conservatism and the dialectic of ideology
A return of barbarism
Roundtable
Intellectuals in the face of the war
Guilty of goodness? Or innocently good
Thirty Years After
Capitalism and socialism, opposed to each other in the Cold War, began to gradually exchange their features: in the West, capitalism started incorporating socialist institutions of welfare state, and the soft version of socialism became an ideology of intellectuals. At the same time, in the East, socialism could not resist consumer culture, while intellectuals had switched to either conservative or purely liberal positions, both being sharply cri…
The Probing of God-Bearer
The article is simultaneously an extended review of the book by Grigory Yudin entitled Public Opinion; or, The Power of Numbers (EUSPb Press, 2020) and an essay on the phenomenon of public opinion in the light of the repressive tendencies of contemporary society from the standpoint of critical theory. Relying mostly on Adorno, the author shows that public opinion polls are not only the result of the alienating reification, but also an effect of t…
Les Grecs et les Juifs
Lenin on democratic theory
The intellectual heritage of the 1917 Revolution
Spontaneity and Revolution
This article discusses the heritage of 1917 in one important aspect: the problem of spontaneity. It then describes and problematizes, from this angle, the contemporary movements of the liberal Left. It appears that spontaneity is at odds with the need of these movements to internationalize and undermines their legitimacy, at the national level. Based on this empirical and practical observation, backed with examples from recent protest movements a…
Negativity in Communism
The article addresses the notion of communism with a special angle of factuality and negativity, and not in the usual sense of a futurist utopia. After considering the main contemporary theories of communism in left-leaning political thought, the author turns to the Soviet experience of an “actually existing communism.” Apart from and against the bureaucratic state, a social reality existed organized around res nullius, that is, an unappropriated…
Negativity (Dis)embodied
This article discusses the relationship between two philosophies of the twentieth century: those of Theodor W. Adorno and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Both authors emphasize the notion of mimesis and see it as an ontological and an epistemological category and as the site of the nonidentical and negative, which turns against itself in the identitarian machine of Western rationality and, more generally, in the immanent religions of fascination. The d…
Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt on the Jewish question
L'éducation supérieure dans la Russie post-soviétique et la crise mondiale des universités
La situation des universités russes est ambigüe : le système hérité du passé est inerte, isolationniste, et corrompu, mais l'alternative existante est très souvent la formalisation et la commercialisation de l'esprit néolibéral. Cette situation exa-cerbe les mêmes contradictions qui affectent le reste du monde : l'ouverture de l'université vers la société ne s'opère que dans une forme néolibérale qui l'instrumentalise ; le souci de la qualité et …
Marx's Theory of Time and the Present Historical Moment
The essay discusses Marx's understanding of time, as represented in his early political writings, in his Utopian vision of a society based on leisure, and most prominently in his critical economy, where paradoxes of time are responsible for the seemingly irrational self-generation of capital. In all these instances, Marx treats time as being finite, or eschatological (even if prosaic times, like the working day, are in question). It is because of…
What is an Orientation in History? Openness and Subjectivity
This essay attempts to formulate an ethical program for today's left by showing that such a program should necessarily involve both the insistence on a subjectivity, in the sense of a revolutionary self-determination that would go beyond the liberal pre-established autonomy and an openness to the new and unrecognized that would go beyond all liberal tolerance. I further argue that the only way to understand the co-articulation of subjectivity and…
Le terrorisme contemporain et ses conditions philosophiques
You Can't Anticipate Explosions
Jacques Rancière and members of the group Chto Delat (St. Petersburg/Moscow)—Artemy Magun, Dmitry Vilensky, and Alexandr Skidan—discuss the pertinence of the concept of the avant-garde to the history of art and the present day. Chto Delat members defend the thesis of an essential link between art's political message and its formal features, such as a general “negativity” in relation to the classical canon. They also suggest a distinction between …
The Post-Communist Revolution in Russia and the Genesis of Representative Democracy
‘Representative democracy’ was an oxymoron at the moment of its emergence. Representation (especially, representation by election) had always been considered an aristocratic institution. Rousseau saw it as a ‘modern’—that is, a medieval, feudal—form of government, linked to the institution of estates. In general, one may argue that representative democracy as such is the creation of revolution. Revolution is an event in which a society turns agai…
La révolution négative
The Work of Leisure
The modern notion of history was definitively formulated in the eighteenth century, when Rousseau and Kant restricted the access of humans to their own supersensible, substantial nature (essence). Man appeared as a historical being, one whose definition lies in his development (or, in the case of Rousseau, fall), in his negativity. As soon as this vision of human nature was made public, a question arose, which dominated the subsequent tradition o…
Le danger du pouvoir ou le pouvoir du danger
Marx's Theory of Time and the Present Historical Moment
The essay discusses Marx's understanding of time, as represented in his early political writings, in his Utopian vision of a society based on leisure, and most prominently in his critical economy, where paradoxes of time are responsible for the seemingly irrational self-generation of capital. In all these instances, Marx treats time as being finite, or eschatological (even if prosaic times, like the working day, are in question). It is because of…
Negativity (Dis)embodied
This article discusses the relationship between two philosophies of the twentieth century: those of Theodor W. Adorno and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Both authors emphasize the notion of mimesis and see it as an ontological and an epistemological category and as the site of the nonidentical and negative, which turns against itself in the identitarian machine of Western rationality and, more generally, in the immanent religions of fascination. The d…
Guilty of goodness? Or innocently good
Lenin on democratic theory
The intellectual heritage of the 1917 Revolution
Spontaneity and Revolution
This article discusses the heritage of 1917 in one important aspect: the problem of spontaneity. It then describes and problematizes, from this angle, the contemporary movements of the liberal Left. It appears that spontaneity is at odds with the need of these movements to internationalize and undermines their legitimacy, at the national level. Based on this empirical and practical observation, backed with examples from recent protest movements a…
Negativity in Communism
The article addresses the notion of communism with a special angle of factuality and negativity, and not in the usual sense of a futurist utopia. After considering the main contemporary theories of communism in left-leaning political thought, the author turns to the Soviet experience of an “actually existing communism.” Apart from and against the bureaucratic state, a social reality existed organized around res nullius, that is, an unappropriated…
La révolution négative
Le danger du pouvoir ou le pouvoir du danger
The Work of Leisure
The modern notion of history was definitively formulated in the eighteenth century, when Rousseau and Kant restricted the access of humans to their own supersensible, substantial nature (essence). Man appeared as a historical being, one whose definition lies in his development (or, in the case of Rousseau, fall), in his negativity. As soon as this vision of human nature was made public, a question arose, which dominated the subsequent tradition o…
La révolution négative
The Post-Communist Revolution in Russia and the Genesis of Representative Democracy
‘Representative democracy’ was an oxymoron at the moment of its emergence. Representation (especially, representation by election) had always been considered an aristocratic institution. Rousseau saw it as a ‘modern’—that is, a medieval, feudal—form of government, linked to the institution of estates. In general, one may argue that representative democracy as such is the creation of revolution. Revolution is an event in which a society turns agai…
Le terrorisme contemporain et ses conditions philosophiques
You Can't Anticipate Explosions
Jacques Rancière and members of the group Chto Delat (St. Petersburg/Moscow)—Artemy Magun, Dmitry Vilensky, and Alexandr Skidan—discuss the pertinence of the concept of the avant-garde to the history of art and the present day. Chto Delat members defend the thesis of an essential link between art's political message and its formal features, such as a general “negativity” in relation to the classical canon. They also suggest a distinction between …
Marx's Theory of Time and the Present Historical Moment
The essay discusses Marx's understanding of time, as represented in his early political writings, in his Utopian vision of a society based on leisure, and most prominently in his critical economy, where paradoxes of time are responsible for the seemingly irrational self-generation of capital. In all these instances, Marx treats time as being finite, or eschatological (even if prosaic times, like the working day, are in question). It is because of…
What is an Orientation in History? Openness and Subjectivity
This essay attempts to formulate an ethical program for today's left by showing that such a program should necessarily involve both the insistence on a subjectivity, in the sense of a revolutionary self-determination that would go beyond the liberal pre-established autonomy and an openness to the new and unrecognized that would go beyond all liberal tolerance. I further argue that the only way to understand the co-articulation of subjectivity and…
L'éducation supérieure dans la Russie post-soviétique et la crise mondiale des universités
La situation des universités russes est ambigüe : le système hérité du passé est inerte, isolationniste, et corrompu, mais l'alternative existante est très souvent la formalisation et la commercialisation de l'esprit néolibéral. Cette situation exa-cerbe les mêmes contradictions qui affectent le reste du monde : l'ouverture de l'université vers la société ne s'opère que dans une forme néolibérale qui l'instrumentalise ; le souci de la qualité et …
Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt on the Jewish question
Negativity (Dis)embodied
This article discusses the relationship between two philosophies of the twentieth century: those of Theodor W. Adorno and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Both authors emphasize the notion of mimesis and see it as an ontological and an epistemological category and as the site of the nonidentical and negative, which turns against itself in the identitarian machine of Western rationality and, more generally, in the immanent religions of fascination. The d…
Negativity in Communism
The article addresses the notion of communism with a special angle of factuality and negativity, and not in the usual sense of a futurist utopia. After considering the main contemporary theories of communism in left-leaning political thought, the author turns to the Soviet experience of an “actually existing communism.” Apart from and against the bureaucratic state, a social reality existed organized around res nullius, that is, an unappropriated…
The intellectual heritage of the 1917 Revolution
Spontaneity and Revolution
This article discusses the heritage of 1917 in one important aspect: the problem of spontaneity. It then describes and problematizes, from this angle, the contemporary movements of the liberal Left. It appears that spontaneity is at odds with the need of these movements to internationalize and undermines their legitimacy, at the national level. Based on this empirical and practical observation, backed with examples from recent protest movements a…
Lenin on democratic theory
The Probing of God-Bearer
The article is simultaneously an extended review of the book by Grigory Yudin entitled Public Opinion; or, The Power of Numbers (EUSPb Press, 2020) and an essay on the phenomenon of public opinion in the light of the repressive tendencies of contemporary society from the standpoint of critical theory. Relying mostly on Adorno, the author shows that public opinion polls are not only the result of the alienating reification, but also an effect of t…
Les Grecs et les Juifs
Thirty Years After
Capitalism and socialism, opposed to each other in the Cold War, began to gradually exchange their features: in the West, capitalism started incorporating socialist institutions of welfare state, and the soft version of socialism became an ideology of intellectuals. At the same time, in the East, socialism could not resist consumer culture, while intellectuals had switched to either conservative or purely liberal positions, both being sharply cri…
A return of barbarism
Roundtable
Intellectuals in the face of the war
Guilty of goodness? Or innocently good
Conservatism and the dialectic of ideology
A Political Theology of Sortition
Taking seriously the conservative challenge
Philosophy (19 works) · Political science (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Political philosophy (6 works)