FACULTY COLLOQUIUM SERIES - Michal Oklot Presents: Metaphysics and the Situation
Wednesday, November 29, 2023 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CET/GMT+1Lecture Hall
V. V. Rozanov’s Affinities with the Spring Torrents Youth Movement
Vasily Vasilevich Rozanov (1856-1919) is a Russian writer, modernist thinker, literary and cultural critic, intellectual provocateur, and, above all, the author of unique fragmentary prose collections that Soul Bellow once called “charming, strange books.” He is also the author of polarizing anti-Semitic pamphlets and far-right populist articles that played a prominent role in the so-called Beilis Affair. Rozanov’s work thus raises questions about the relationship between philosophical and artistic ideas on the one hand, and chauvinistic, authoritarian, and racist ideologies on the other. As one of its early critics put the question: Is the "situation" integral to the "metaphysics?" In other words, can we accept Rosanov’s philosophical image of the world while bracketing – as much of the Rozanov scholarship has done - his collaboration with the anti-Semitic press, and the "pogrom" rhetoric of his feuilletons and editorials?
Arguing for the necessity of a Rosanov debate similar to those on Martin Heidegger, Emil M. Cioran, or Paul de Man, this talk seeks to stage this debate in two relatively unknown contexts. The first is Rozanov's collaboration with the ultranationalist informal youth movement gathered around the student journal Spring Torrents [Вешние Воды] (1914-1918), which shows his national radicalism as a fundamental mode of thinking. The second, the Russian émigré attitudes toward Rozanov of two former members of Spring Torrents circle illustrate two approaches to the question of the metaphysics-and-the-situation: silence and embracing both as an organic whole. These reflect the development of émigré ideological shifts from radical nationalism toward international socialism and further towards fascism.
Organized by the Faculty Colloquium Organizing Team: Gale Raj-Reichert, Ewa Atanassow, Nina Tecklenburg
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