Freyberg, S.

Meisner, L.

English

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intellectual history, and intellectual history’s conspicu-ously indeterminate relation to the production of philo-sophical ideas. The boundaries have always been a bitporous for Jay, who began his career as one of the firsthistorians of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory; theexposition of critical theory, and its attendant if some-times opaque tendency towards ‘emancipation’, haveshaped the parameters of his intellectual historical pro-ject. Sometimes this involves seeing the ways in whichsuch tendencies are blocked. After all, much like Jay, thecurrent generation of Frankfurt School critical theoristsare ensnared in a stalemate over intruding Eurocentrism,relativism and context, arguing that such forces under-mine the capacity for social criticism in the first place. Inwriting a book that attempts to reconcile and deal withthe same set of problems, Jay shows that one of intellec-tual history’s most formidable if implicit goals has beento save philosophy from itself, and to set it back on itspath.Mimi HowardBack from the futureKeti Chukhrov, Practicing the Good: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism (Minneapolis: eflux/University of MinnesotaPress, 2020). 336pp., £22.99 pb., 978 1 51790 955 0Spinoza’s dictum that we ought to understand first – notridicule, not cry, nor detest – is ignored surprisingly of-ten, even in philosophical scholarship, when it comesto revising and appropriating intellectual labour fromthe context of ‘real existing socialism’ (RES). Such dis-missal is usually not based on any kind of engagementwith the contents and contexts of that project and thusironically affirms what it pretends to criticise: since theintellectual labour and culture of RES, so it is said, werecompletely dependent on ideological pregivens, it maynot be taken seriously, except perhaps in its early phasesor dissident aspects. This view, apart from being histor-ically inadequate, begs the question of its own ideolo-gical dependence and amounts to a taboo, cutting offpast experiences, achievements and failures, debates andstruggles from contemporary appropriation, which couldhelp us to understand our own times better. In fact, thecommunist heritage of RES continues to pose a challengenot only in ‘post-communist’ contexts but globally.Keti Chukhrov’s recent book Practicing the Good: De-sire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism can be best evaluatedas an intervention in contemporary theoretical and cul-tural debates. It presents a perspective that uses culturalproduction in ‘historical socialism’, as she calls it, as amodel to rethink the connection of political economyand cultural production in terms of alternatives to con-temporary art and critical theory.In its own way, the book thus relates to the questionof ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher, Jameson et al.) withoutdiscussing it explicitly. Chukhrov does not refute thatanalysis of the internalisation of neoliberal capitalism,but from the outset widens its scope, historically andmethodologically. If capitalist mechanisms of extractionhave infiltrated our minds so pervasively that they man-age our desires, what about desire in socialism? Againstthe naturalisation of libidinal economy (an argument of-ten used to explain the demise of RES), she argues that ina different society with a different political economy theemergence, meaning and expression of desire changesalong with other ‘ontics’. In this sense, cultural produc-tion in RES seems somewhat futuristic today.This bold claim probably encompasses more thana single book can account for. Accordingly, Chukhrovaims at giving hints in this direction rather than try-ing to prove the hypothesis. With its four loosely inter-woven parts – Political Economy, Sexuality, Aesthetics,and Philosophic Ontics of Communism– the book is bestread as partly exploring and partly experimenting withcommunist thought embodied in late Soviet works, ran-ging from philosophical to artistic projects, to this end.What Chukhrov aims to unveil in these works is the ac-tual experience of being part of a project towards thecommon good, reflecting the cultural implications of anon-surplus-value-economy on different levels.86 RADICAL PHILOSOPHY 2.12 / Spring 2022The book allows us to get to grips, first, with the con-tinuing Cold War schema in the ‘West’ that presents itsown norms as the only possible universals, with all itsstereotypes, contradictions and projections; and, second,with the capitalist unconscious of post-‘68 ‘critical theor-ies’ and art. As Chukhrov argues, the dismissal of intel-lectual labour in RES, even within openly anti-capitalistprojects since the 1960s, as in ‘Western (post-)Marxism’and later poststructuralist continuations, leads to an im-passe when attempting to think about the overcomingof capitalist conditions. Chukhrov argues that most ofthese projects do not really engage in changing whatthey criticise; they reflect rather than overturn capital-ist social relations. In such projects, the desire to over-come capitalism is often not as strong as the desire tounbound desire. But as Spinoza said, ‘a passion can onlybe overcome by a stronger passion’. The rebuke of social-ist culture in terms of its dependence on historical soci-etal constraints and prescriptive ideology is thus turnedaround by Chukhrov: what kind of ideology and whichconcrete socio-economic constellations shape the cul-tural production and mental labour of ‘western modern-87ity’, a modernity we ‘capitalist subjects’, somehow share,and which after 1989 presented itself as the only real-istic socio-economic and political formation (an ideologypresented as non-ideology, parading as pure neutrality)?When the western left, in particular artists and crit-ical theorists (in the broad sense), dismissed socialist cul-ture in RES,Chukhrov argues, it followed assumptions (inparticular about hedonism) formed by a capitalist reality,or implicitly hypostatised them. Unable to integrate theexperience of what it actually means to develop commun-ism and socialist culture under the abhorred conditionsof RES, there was only one choice – the apology of theclassic practice of avant-garde art: subversion.For Chukhrov, this was (and still is) a necessary ef-fect of the inability to actually have the slightest chanceof changing societal conditions. But this has a psycho-logical twist: the inability to think alternative realitiesto capitalism leads to a fascination with it and henceto its disavowed affirmation. In this way, the compli-city of those forms of culture and reflection which aremeant to criticise capitalism’s practices in fact repro-duce it theoretically, producing either hopelessness orauto-aggression.Chukhrov follows here a basic idea of Soviet thinkerMikhail Lifshitz, who in discussions of the philosophyof avant-garde and modernist art called this predica-ment the ‘herostratus complex’ of (post-)modern culture,and already pointed to its inherent anti-enlightenmentstance, with auto-aggressive tendencies and a zeal fordestruction of humanist ideals. Chukhrov takes up Lif-shitz’s critique and concretises it with respect to con-temporary art and theory in particular. Since subversionmostly remains on the level of negation, the actual ques-tion then becomes how ‘the negation of negation’ turnsout.This topic is particularly present in the first part ofthe book, where Chukhrov engages in an explicit cri-tique of thinkers including Butler, Castoriadis, Deleuze,Guattari and Lyotard, among others. By trying to groundpolitical action in subversion, they follow the moderniststrategy in art: only a ‘break’ with, or a going ‘beyond’ of,all kinds of cultural and symbolic forms makes an over-coming of the existing modes of perception and socialontology conceivable. Any kind of generality or univer-sal must be attacked. Nowadays, it may be obvious thatthis kind of apology of counterculture did not lead muchfurther. For Chukhrov, it amounts to fighting alienationwith more alienation.After a transitional chapter on ‘the poor object of theSoviet Commonwealth’, drawing on Groys, Kolganov andartists of Moscow conceptualism, the last – very interest-ing – chapter of the first part on ‘Political Economy’ isdedicated to an analysis of Soviet films of the 1960s and1970s. For Chukhrov, late Soviet fdrive is, from today’sviewpoint, a ‘non-cinema’, not only because it did notwork in terms of a capitalist cultural industry, but be-cause of the framework intricately connecting the in-dividual to their social conditions. Although westernobservers might assume that after the thaw period, so-cialist realism in film was abandoned (think, for example,of Tarkovsky), it in fact lived on. With discussions ofselected works by filmmakers such as Larisa Shepitkoand Vadim Zobin, Chukhrov illustrates a kind of socialistsubjectivity present in these works, where protagonistshad to face the tedious realities of everyday life underpost-Stalinist socialist conditions– leading to a stance ofresignation, while at the same time holding tight to thecommunist ideal. In this context, Chukhrov argues thatdesire changed form: ‘in a constant conflict between in-dividual desire and the necessity of the commons.’ ThusChukhrov argues that an inherent problem of RES was‘too much socialism’, in which developing a socialist sub-jectivity was hindered by the actual contradictions of re-lations and forces of production, on the one hand, and onthose between ideology, not least as associated with thecommodity fetish, and the plain reality of use-value pro-duction, on the other. Nevertheless, Chukhrov remindsus that these ‘realia’ show what it means to practice thegood, since they show that at the centre of these films isthe urge to de-alienate.This question is also discussed in the book’s nextsection, ‘Sexuality’, which delves into Soviet theatre andliterature, especially the work of Andrei Platonov, in com-parison to the works of, for example, Pier Paolo Pasolini,while also referring to Alexandra Kollontai and GyörgyLukács. The topic of desire is presented in the frameworkof the critique of psychoanalysis in Voloshinov and Vy-gotsky and again draws on the concept of ‘anti-libidinalself-resignation’. One of Chukhrov’s more controver-sial claims is her insistence on defending a conceptionof resignation, which does not refer to a death drive orself-annihilation, but relates to care for the commons.88The third part of the book on ‘Aesthetics’ mainlydiscusses the work of Lifshitz, a friend of both Pla-tonov and Lukács. Chukhrov defends the realist con-ception of aesthetics in Lifshitz, emphasising its univer-sal (non-prescriptive) normative claims. Lifshitz envi-sioned a Grand Aesthetic analogous to Spinoza’s Ethicsand defended a classicist conception of art because, asChukhrov puts it poignantly, classical art actually is themost communist. In the same vein she discusses ‘ThePhilosophic Ontics of Communism’ in relation to thephilosophy of Evald Ilyenkov. In siding with the SovietHegelo-Marxism of Lifshitz and Ilyenkov, understoodas a form of ‘cosmological humanism’, it becomes clearwhy Chukhrov emphasises concepts like the universal(vseobshee), metanoia, human resignation, the ideal, theclassical and realism as indispensable for rethinking crit-ical theory. It is only through the transformation thatthese concepts underwent in the Soviet context (by in-cluding them in a truly materialist dialectic) that thesignificance of their absence or rather abolishment inthe Western context becomes conceivable.It is at this point that the possible limits of her ar-gument about political economy and its influence oncultural production, social ontology and ontics becomeapparent. If capitalist conditions led to an abolishmentof basic ideals of emancipation in capitalist contexts fromthe 1960s onwards because of the inability to overcomecapitalism, how can the emergence of these ideals beexplained? As is well-known, the communist ideal fromMarx to Lenin and Ilyenkov is in explicit continuity withemancipatory projects which emerged in quite differ-ent conditions (like the French Enlightenment or Ger-man Idealism). Furthermore, criticising the synthesisof (post-)modernism and critical theory, Chukhrov of-ten subsumes various thinkers under one category (e.g.‘Western Marxism’). But the incompatibility in termsof, say, a fascination with libidinal economy or even aninternalised lust for capitalist liquidations can hardly beequated to the critique of the historical realities of RESfor meeting neither the standards of Marxist insights northe horizon of trans-capitalist prospects.Chukhrov concedes from the start that she uses herclaim about the frame of political economy as a ‘logicaltool’ rather than for historical analysis. This definesthe limits of her argument in historical terms. Sincethere is no consistent genealogical account, the argu-ment is purely structural and works mainly as a foil forthe present. Since the contrast does not work well be-fore World War II, the book concentrates on the situationfrom the 1960s onwards, since by then the geopoliticalstalemate seemed cemented and the forms of socialistculture concretised.But another question remains: if Soviet culture wassomehow practically in continuity with the Enlighten-ment project in terms of Bildung (also the word in Rus-sian), while the West practically and (in the seeminglymost advanced forms of art and critical theories) theor-etically gave up on basic conceptual premises of eman-cipation and liberation, wouldn’t it be more obvious toconcentrate more concretely on what Lifshitz called ‘thecapitalist training of the people’, that is, on the effectsand possible real life contradictions in the concepts ofeducation and psychology? To be sure, Chukhrov giveshints in this direction, as for example in her discussion ofVygotsky and the activity theory of Leontiev and in par-ticular Ilyenkov’s emphasis on educational and psycho-logical conceptions from a Marxist point of view, whichhe developed further in engaging with the once famousZagorsk school for blind-deaf children.89In a daring project like this, open questions re-main. Chukhrov seems to oscillate between an explor-ative presentation and experimental provocations. Theproducts of intellectual labour she focuses on, whichreflect the conditions of life in socialism and embodythe spirit of the common cause, can of course not betaken pars pro toto for conditions under RES.And how fardid these conditions already represent actually dealien-ated conditions? Her suggestions, when taken generally,sometimes remain at the level of a provocative travesty ofthe western story and may be read as a parody of today’sideology. If the Soviet Union allegedly was not part of a‘commonmodernity’ but was the ‘absolute other’ of mod-ernity’s legitimate representatives, it may follow that wecan use its (counter-) image in a productive way. How-ever, it is a merit of the ways in which Chukhrov’s booktries to productively relate different levels that it goesbeyond such mirroring. In this respect, Chukhrov in-sists, it needs to be asked why the Soviet experience wasnot taken into account in critical theories of the West?Why did that historical ‘experiment’not become commonknowledge, improving democratic conditions in the Eastand the West after 1989?Her basic assumption throughout is that a societywhich abolished private property and surplus value alongwith the libidinal economy did actually exist. We there-fore have to concede that despite all its failures and short-comings, RES has to be seen as the most advanced soci-etal experiment to date.The book is engaged not so much with the past aswith the present and the future: it is a counterhegemonicundertaking reclaiming something like radical leftismfrom the false appropriations of anti-communist post-modernisms. It provides an insightful, estranging per-spective that shifts the settled horizon beyond its givennormality in order to appropriate experiences from an atleast partly more ‘advanced’ societal formation. In thisway, a new panorama opens up in whose light a wholeset of realities appear that have been hidden from view.Indeed, this ideology-critical shift is the most importantmove that Practicing the Good practices: a debunkingheuristic tool. To reject implicit Cold War settings alsowithin Western (post-)Marxism, Chukhrov makes clearthat dialectical universalism is a more promising way tothink towards a communist ideal on a global level. Sinceher book delivers a basic deconstruction of the capital-ist re-conditioning of critical theories along the lines ofthe postmodern, it is to be counted as one of the mostimportant publications for leftist self-criticism in recentyears.Sascha Freyberg and Lukas MeisnerTheoretical practicesNatalia Romé, For Theory: Althusser and the Politics of Time (Lanham, Boulder, NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). 206pp.,£81.00 hb., 978 1 53814 764 1Although Natalia Romé’s book For Theory: Althusser andthe Politics of Time comes in the disguise of humble sec-ondary literature, it is not just an account of Althusser’stheory of temporality but also makes a claim for thepower of theory in political struggle. She insists on theprecise relation of theory and practice as central to Marx-ism. The book reengages with Althusser’s most import-ant question: how does theory accomplish the differen-tiation and demarcation that unites it with practice? Inattempting to find an answer, Romé’s book deals withwhatWarrenMontag calls in his introduction Althusser’s‘impatient’ concepts: concepts, suddenly appearing onlyto disappear again, concepts that are used as vehicles toget him through certain kinds of terrain. On this ground,Romé presents a detailed account of Althusserian theory,that flourishes in close readings of the Althusserian clas-sics, as well as providing an account of texts that wereonly recently edited.Romé introduces us into her reading of Althusserthrough the political experience of her home countryof Argentina. This project is connected with a certaintheoretical tradition of reading Althusser, but it also un-covers a field of political struggle, first against the dic-tatorship and then against the ‘democratic’ variation90 RADICAL PHILOSOPHY 2.12 / Spring 2022

Back from the Future. Review of: Chukhrov, Kethi: Practising the Good: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism. Minneapolis: eflux/University of Minnesota Press 2020

http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000A-A020-C

Back from the Future. Review of: Chukhrov, Kethi: Practising the Good: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism. Minneapolis: eflux/University of Minnesota Press 2020

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