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Mimesis

The Literature of the Soviet Avant-garde

The Analytic Anthropology of Literature

The Literature of the Soviet Avant-garde

The Analytic Anthropology of Literature

By Valery Podoroga
Introduction by Ioulia Podoroga
Translated by Evgeni V. Pavlov

By Valery Podoroga
Introduction by Ioulia Podoroga
Translated by Evgeni V. Pavlov

By Valery Podoroga
Translated by Evgeni V. Pavlov

By Valery Podoroga
Translated by Evgeni V. Pavlov

By Valery Podoroga
Translated by Evgeni V. Pavlov

By Valery Podoroga
Translated by Evgeni V. Pavlov

By Valery Podoroga
Translated by Evgeni V. Pavlov

By Valery Podoroga
Translated by Evgeni V. Pavlov

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Paperback $39.95

Jul 02, 2024 | ISBN 9781804294895

Paperback $34.95

Aug 09, 2022 | ISBN 9781786636676

Ebook $14.99

Jul 23, 2024 | ISBN 9781804294918

Ebook $9.99

Aug 09, 2022 | ISBN 9781786636652

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      Jul 02, 2024 | ISBN 9781804294895

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      Aug 09, 2022 | ISBN 9781786636676

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    About Mimesis

    The politics of literature in the construction of worlds

    The Russian Revolution was a literary as well as political upheaval. With a focus on the revolutionary works of Andrei Platonov and the futurist collective Oberiu, leading Russian literary thinker Valery Podoroga shows how profoundly the Soviet experiment overturned the traditional expectations of fiction and poetry. The production of this groundbreaking new work was inextricably interwoven with the political and historical debates of the time.

    This volume expands on Podoroga’s critical exploration of the analytic anthropology of literature. Here he delves into the ways literature can be used in ‘world-building’, both in terms of what happens inside the narrative and how it reflects the external world. He explores the function of the work outside of its time: both as a means to project itself into the future and as a document of a former age. How are we to read the past through these works of the imagination?

    With an introductory essay from the author’s daughter, Ioulia Podoroga.

    About Mimesis

    Ground-breaking work of philosophy and Russian Literature: translated for the first time

    Valery Podoroga was one of the most important thinkers of his generation. Here his most famous work is translated into English for the first time. In it he gives a panorama view of Russian writing, focusing in on the work of Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Andrei Bely. He identifies these authors as pioneers in creating an ‘other literature’. This constituted a new form of mimesis or vision of the world, in opposition to the Imperial and national myths.

    In Mimesis Podoroga develops and elaborates his analytic anthropological approach on these authors with startling effect, excavating the identities and forms of Russian literature, and society. He places an emphasis on how a literary work is a process of world building: both internally by creating a fictive world, but also how it reflects the wider world in which it was produced, and the power with which it changes the world.
     
    Finally, the literary work’s ability to exist in a time that is other than its own time, a time where it does not have a contemporary reader and an author who exercises his will, but where it nonetheless continues to mean something.

    Mimesis is rightly seen as the masterwork of one of the world’s leading literary thinkers.

    About Mimesis

    The politics of literature in the construction of worlds

    The Russian Revolution was a literary as well as political upheaval. With a focus on the revolutionary works of Andrei Platonov and the futurist collective Oberiu, leading Russian literary thinker Valery Podoroga shows how profoundly the Soviet experiment overturned the traditional expectations of fiction and poetry. The production of this groundbreaking new work was inextricably interwoven with the political and historical debates of the time.

    This volume expands on Podoroga’s critical exploration of the analytic anthropology of literature. Here he delves into the ways literature can be used in ‘world-building’, both in terms of what happens inside the narrative and how it reflects the external world. He explores the function of the work outside of its time: both as a means to project itself into the future and as a document of a former age. How are we to read the past through these works of the imagination?

    With an introductory essay from the author’s daughter, Ioulia Podoroga.

    About Mimesis

    Ground-breaking work of philosophy and Russian Literature: translated for the first time

    Valery Podoroga was one of the most important thinkers of his generation. Here his most famous work is translated into English for the first time. In it he gives a panorama view of Russian writing, focusing in on the work of Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Andrei Bely. He identifies these authors as pioneers in creating an ‘other literature’. This constituted a new form of mimesis or vision of the world, in opposition to the Imperial and national myths.

    In Mimesis Podoroga develops and elaborates his analytic anthropological approach on these authors with startling effect, excavating the identities and forms of Russian literature, and society. He places an emphasis on how a literary work is a process of world building: both internally by creating a fictive world, but also how it reflects the wider world in which it was produced, and the power with which it changes the world.
     
    Finally, the literary work’s ability to exist in a time that is other than its own time, a time where it does not have a contemporary reader and an author who exercises his will, but where it nonetheless continues to mean something.

    Mimesis is rightly seen as the masterwork of one of the world’s leading literary thinkers.

    Product Details

    Category: Literary Fiction | Essays & Literary Collections | Literary Criticism

    Paperback | $39.95
    Published by Verso
    Jul 02, 2024 | 192 Pages | 6 x 9-1/5 | ISBN 9781804294895

    Category: Literary Criticism

    Paperback | $34.95
    Published by Verso
    Aug 09, 2022 | 320 Pages | 6 x 9-1/4 | ISBN 9781786636676

    Category: Literary Fiction | Essays & Literary Collections | Literary Criticism

    Ebook | $14.99
    Published by Verso
    Jul 23, 2024 | 192 Pages | ISBN 9781804294918

    Category: Literary Criticism

    Ebook | $9.99
    Published by Verso
    Aug 09, 2022 | 320 Pages | ISBN 9781786636652

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    Praise

    “Podoroga has long been heralded as a quasi-patron saint of post-Soviet philosophy. . . Podoroga liberates classics of Russian literature from questions of historicism or fidelity to an external reality.”
    —Marxism and Philosophy

    Table Of Contents

    Introduction: The Analytical Anthropology of Literature by Ioulia Podoroga


    PART I. Eunuch of the Soul
    Introduction: Homo ex machina
    1 Positions of Reading
    2 History as Nature
    3 The Inventor of Machines


    PART II. The Fainting of the World
    Introduction: Fear of High Noon
    1 Alea: A General Theory of Chance
    2 Reverse Rotation
    3 Conversations: A Community of Friends in Time

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