The Communist Postscript

The Communist Postscript Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The Communist Postscript book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

The Communist Postscript

Author : Boris Groys
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 129 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2022-08-23
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781844674329

Get Book

The Communist Postscript by Boris Groys Pdf

A provocative essay on the relationship between communism, philosophy and language. Since Plato, philosophers have dreamed of establishing a rational state ruled through the power of language. In this radical and disturbing account of Soviet philosophy, Boris Groys argues that communism shares that dream and is best understood as an attempt to replace financial with linguistic bonds as the cement uniting society. The transformative power of language, the medium of equality, is the key to any new communist revolution.

The Strange Death of Soviet Communism

Author : Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2024-06-07
Category : History
ISBN : 9781412835176

Get Book

The Strange Death of Soviet Communism by Nikolas K. Gvosdev Pdf

The collapse of communism marked the close of an era of world history. This work brings together scholars of Soviet history, who show why the experiment (on modes of organization to social life) failed and how it has destroyed the laboratory of socialist utopias.

Going Public

Author : Boris Groĭs
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Aesthetics
ISBN : 1934105309

Get Book

Going Public by Boris Groĭs Pdf

If all things in the world can be considered as sources of aesthetic experience, then art no longer holds a privileged position. Rather, art comes between the subject and the world, and any aesthetic discourse used to legitimize art must also necessarily serve to undermine it. Following his recent books Art Power and The Communist Postscript, in Going Public Boris Groys looks to escape entrenched aesthetic and sociological understandings of art--which always assume the position of the spectator, of the consumer. Let us instead consider art from the position of the producer, who does not ask what it looks like or where it comes from, but why it exists in the first place. Boris Groys is Professor at New York University and Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of Design, Karlsruhe. He is the author of many books, including The Total Art of Stalinism, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment, Art Power, The Communist Postscript, History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism. e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle

The Black Book of Communism

Author : Stéphane Courtois
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 920 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : History
ISBN : 0674076087

Get Book

The Black Book of Communism by Stéphane Courtois Pdf

This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the accomplishments of communism around the world. The book is the first attempt to catalogue and analyse the crimes of communism over 70 years.

Post-communist Nostalgia

Author : Maria Todorova,Zsuzsa Gille
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : History
ISBN : 9780857456434

Get Book

Post-communist Nostalgia by Maria Todorova,Zsuzsa Gille Pdf

Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people's lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.

Introduction to Antiphilosophy

Author : Boris Groys
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2020-05-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781789601138

Get Book

Introduction to Antiphilosophy by Boris Groys Pdf

Philosophy is traditionally understood as the search for universal truths, and philosophers are supposed to transmit those truths beyond the limits of their own culture. But, today, we have become sceptical about the ability of an individual philosopher to engage in 'universal thinking', so philosophy seems to capitulate in the face of cultural relativism. In Introduction to Antiphilosophy, Boris Groys argues that modern 'antiphilosophy' does not pursue the universality of thought as its goal but proposes in its place the universality of life, material forces, social practices, passions, and experiences - angst, vitality, ecstasy, the gift, revolution, laughter or 'profane illumination' - and he analyses this shift from thought to life and action in the work of thinkers from Kierkegaard to Derrida, from Nietzsche to Benjamin. Ranging across the history of modern thought, Introduction to Antiphilosophy endeavours to liberate philosophy from the stereotypes that hinder its development.

Philosophy of Care

Author : Boris Groys
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 113 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2022-03-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781839764929

Get Book

Philosophy of Care by Boris Groys Pdf

Retracing the philosophical discussions around care Our current culture is dominated by the ideology of creativity. One is supposed to create the new and not to care about the things as they are. This ideology legitimises the domination of the “creative class” over the rest of the population that is predominantly occupied by forms of care – medical care, child care, agriculture, industrial maintenance and so on. We have a responsibility to care for our own bodies, but here again our culture tends to thematize the bodies of desire and to ignore the bodies of care – ill bodies in need of self-care and social care. But the discussion of care has a long philosophical tradition. The book retraces some episodes of this tradition - beginning with Plato and ending with Alexander Bogdanov through Hegel, Heidegger, Bataille and many others. The central question discussed is: who should be the subject of care? Should I care for myself or trust the others, the system, the institutions? Here, the concept of the self-care becomes a revolutionary principle that confronts the individual with the dominating mechanisms of control.

The State and Revolution

Author : V. I. Lenin
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2024-01-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781804292877

Get Book

The State and Revolution by V. I. Lenin Pdf

Lenin's most important and controversial theoretical text Lenin’s booklet The State and Revolution struck the world of Marxist theory like a lightning bolt. Written in the months running up to the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin turned the traditional socialist concept of the state on its head, arguing for the need to smash the organs of the bourgeois state to create a ‘semi-state’ of soviets, or workers’ councils, in which ordinary people would take on the functions of the state machine in a new and radically democratic manner. This new edition includes a substantial introduction by renowned theorist Antonio Negri, who argues for the continued relevance of these ideas.

Communism in Mexico

Author : Karl M. Schmitt
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2014-11-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781477304884

Get Book

Communism in Mexico by Karl M. Schmitt Pdf

The ease with which Cuba slipped into its relationship with Communism revived in the United States its recurring nightmare in which other Latin American countries, particularly Mexico, become satellites of Russia or Red China. But such an occurrence is most unlikely in Mexico, according to Karl Schmitt, former intelligence research analyst with the United States Department of State. Communism in Mexico traces efforts during the early twentieth century to create a Soviet-style society in one of the largest and most strategically situated of the Latin American countries. Schmitt writes authoritatively of the Mexican Communist movement, tracing its development from an early and potentially powerful political-economic base to the increasingly fragmented and weakened collection of parties and front groups of the 1960s. He follows the various schisms and factional divisions to the mid-1950s, when the process of disintegration became most noticeable, and explores and analyzes in detail Communist attempts since then to establish unity among the many quarreling and frustrated groups of the now-splintered movement. Three Communist parties in Mexico, a score of front groups, and numerous infiltration cells in non-Communist organizations such as student and labor groups, all recognize in a broad way a common and ultimate goal: the creation of a Soviet-style society. But their attempts at unity have consistently led only to further bickering and frustration. This period is subjected to a thorough study and analysis in an effort to understand and explain the Communists' lack of success. Schmitt presciently concludes that Communism's future in Mexico will be as cloudy as its past, and that the accelerating economy and improving social conditions there will serve to weaken the movement still further.

On the New

Author : Boris Groys
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2014-07-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781781682920

Get Book

On the New by Boris Groys Pdf

On the New looks at the economies of exchange and valuation that drive modern culture's key sites: the intellectual marketplace and the archive. As ideas move from one context to another, newness is created. This continuous shifting of the line that separates the valuable from the worthless, culture from profanity, is at the center of Boris Groys's investigation which aims to map the uncharted territory of what constitutes artistic innovation and what processes underpin its recognition and appropriation.

Art Power

Author : Boris Groys
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2013-02-08
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780262518680

Get Book

Art Power by Boris Groys Pdf

A new book by Boris Groys acknowledges the problem and potential of art's complex relationship to power. Art has its own power in the world, and is as much a force in the power play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war politics. Art, argues the distinguished theoretician Boris Groys, is hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market's fiats of inclusion and exclusion. In Art Power, Groys examines modern and contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art, Groys writes, is produced and brought before the public in two ways—as a commodity and as a tool of political propaganda. In the contemporary art scene, very little attention is paid to the latter function. Arguing for the inclusion of politically motivated art in contemporary art discourse, Groys considers art produced under totalitarianism, Socialism, and post-Communism. He also considers today's mainstream Western art—which he finds behaving more and more according the norms of ideological propaganda: produced and exhibited for the masses at international exhibitions, biennials, and festivals. Contemporary art, Groys argues, demonstrates its power by appropriating the iconoclastic gestures directed against itself—by positioning itself simultaneously as an image and as a critique of the image. In Art Power, Groys examines this fundamental appropriation that produces the paradoxical object of the modern artwork.

Stalin's Curse

Author : Robert Gellately
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2013-03-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9780307962355

Get Book

Stalin's Curse by Robert Gellately Pdf

A chilling, riveting account based on newly released Russian documentation that reveals Joseph Stalin’s true motives—and the extent of his enduring commitment to expanding the Soviet empire—during the years in which he seemingly collaborated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the capitalist West. At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Joseph Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader, whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, and not communist ideology. Now, using recently uncovered documents, Robert Gellately conclusively shows that, in fact, the dictator was biding his time, determined to establish Communist regimes across Europe and beyond. His actions during those years—and the poorly calculated responses to them from the West—set in motion what would eventually become the Cold War. Exciting, deeply engaging, and shrewdly perceptive, Stalin’s Curse is an unprecedented revelation of the sinister machinations of Stalin’s Kremlin.

The Total Art of Stalinism

Author : Boris Groys
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 144 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2014-05-27
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781844678099

Get Book

The Total Art of Stalinism by Boris Groys Pdf

From the ruins of communism, Boris Groys emerges to provoke our interest in the aesthetic goals pursued with such catastrophic consequences by its founders. Interpreting totalitarian art and literature in the context of cultural history, this brilliant essay likens totalitarian aims to the modernists’ goal of producing world-transformative art. In this new edition, Groys revisits the debate that the book has stimulated since its first publication.

The Communist Hypothesis

Author : Alain Badiou
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2015-05-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781781688700

Get Book

The Communist Hypothesis by Alain Badiou Pdf

“We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy—the form of state suited to capitalism—and to the inevitable and ‘natural’ character of the most monstrous inequalities.”—Alain Badiou Alain Badiou’s “communist hypothesis,” first stated in 2008, cut through the cant and compromises of the past twenty years to reconceptualize the Left. The hypothesis is a fresh demand for universal emancipation and a galvanizing call to arms. Anyone concerned with the future of the planet needs to reckon with the ideas outlined within this book.

Chilean Voices

Author : Colin Henfrey,Bernardo Sorj
Publisher : SciELO - Centro Edelstein
Page : 78 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2008-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9788599662847

Get Book

Chilean Voices by Colin Henfrey,Bernardo Sorj Pdf

Each interview focuses on the field in which the speaker was most active. The number of interviews in each field reflects its relative importance: three for industry, two for the country side and one each for the shantytowns and the universities. In the case of industry, anything less could scarcely have conveyed the range of views on its key issues, such as workers’ participation: hence the three selected are from the Communist Party, the MAPU and the Socialist Party.