Post-Theory, Games, and Discursive Resistance

The Bulgarian Case

Edited by Alexander Kiossev

Subjects: European Studies
Series: SUNY series, The Margins of Literature
Paperback : 9780791423585, 190 pages, January 1995
Hardcover : 9780791423578, 190 pages, January 1995

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Table of contents

Introduction: A Broken Promise
Alexander Kiossev

Part I. Ars Simulacri

The Transparent Book
Ivaylo Ditchev

Literalisms
Ivaylo Ditchev

Angulus: The Figure of Sameness
Vladislav Todorov

The Four Luxembourgs, Civitas Peregrina
Vladislav Todorov

Pierre Menard, the Author of Don Quixote
Ivan Kristev

Goethe's Indigo
Alexander Kiossev, etc.

Part II. Political Aesthetics of Communism

Introduction to the Political Aesthetics of Communism
Vladislav Todorov

From Anatomy of the Political Body

 

I. A Political Anatomy of Communism
II. The Guillontine and Acid
Ivan Kristev

 

Part III. The Post-Paranoid Condition

The Post-Paranoid Condition
Ivaylo Ditchev

Epitaph for Sacrifice, Epitaph for the Left
Ivaylo Ditchev

An Essay on Terror
Alexander Kiossev

An Essay on Theoretical Terror
Ivan Kristev

Epilogue: Health Takes the Power
Alexander Kiossev

Contributors

Index

This anthology of mixed-genre writings on East European political culture examines the aesthetic character of Eastern Europe before and after 1989, the beginning of a "post-totalitarian age. "

Description

This book consists of a dialogue of genres (fiction, parables, essay, analytic, programmatic) on the topic of Eastern European political culture before and after 1989. These texts introduce us to a reexamination of the aesthetic and political character of Eastern Europe. The later texts undertake a major theoretical revision of some of the key concepts in aesthetic and political philosophy associated with post-totalitarian Eastern Europe.

The topic is very important for a correct evaluation of the current ideological and aesthetic makeup of our postmodern age. The most stimulating aspect of this collection is its continuous detour through related areas—its definition of political aesthetics by way of the historical avant-garde, its explanation of communism by way of the modernist utopia.

Alexander Kiossev teaches in the Department of Slavic Studies at Georg-August Universität in Göttingen, Germany.

Reviews

"This collection is subtle and dialogic in nature. Its various texts talk to one another, impacting, echoing, responding to one another's arguments. There is also an interesting dialogue of genres in this book: various kinds of discourses collaborate towards a reconstruction of Eastern European political culture, before and after 1989. " — Marcel Cornis-Pope, Virginia Commonwealth University