Soul Incorporated
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4205355 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nariman Skakov (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 73 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 772-800 |
| Publication date | 2014-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Slavic Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5612/slavicreview.73.4.772 |
| OpenAlex | W4237822513 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 20 |
In this essay I explore how Soviet policymakers, biologists, and writers negotiated the borderline dividing the human and animal domains and conceptualized the animal world for ideological purposes. I link the classic Soviet clash betweenstikhiinost'(spontaneity) andsoznatel'nost'(consciousness) with biological experiments of the 1920s that were set to deconstruct the human-animal hierarchy and to create a vision of "classless" biology. I show whyDzhan, one of Andrei Platonov's first earnest attempts to evolve into a socialist realist writer glorifying the Soviet state's firm strides toward the communist future, fails to achieve the semantic certitude of the Stalinist text. Various recurrent and profoundly unconventional themes, often connected with animality and corporeality, drastically muddle the ideological coordinates of the text and preclude the possibility of a clear passage from stikhiinost' to soznatel'nost'. The (a)political status of the Dzhan people as a newly formed Soviet collective body manifests itself in the complex interplay between two rather commonplace categories:bodyandsoul. The body acquires abstract political qualities by becoming collective, while the soul, as a designator for the Dzhan people and as a category, gains flesh. The novella reveals the "Turkmen" nation as a site of bare life itself in its indestructible corporeal glory
Aesthetics · Art · Communism · Consciousness · Epistemology · Glory · Ideology · Literature · Political science · Politics · Soul · Law · Philosophical and Historical Studies · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Soviet and Russian History
Aristotle and the Science of Nature
The Order of Nature in Aristotle's Physics
The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
Capital
Tribal Nation
Stalinist Science
The Soviet Novel, Third Edition
The Collective and the Individual in Russia
Homo Sacer
Three Fundamental Theorems in Aristotle's Politics
Andrei Platonov v poiskakh schast'ia
The Soviet Novel
Laboratory of Dreams
Literature and Revolution
What is to be done? Burning questions of our movement
Beyond Species
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |