The Returns of History

Russian Nietzscheans After Modernity

By Dragan Kujundzic

Subjects: Literary Theory
Series: SUNY series, The Margins of Literature
Paperback : 9780791432341, 219 pages, March 1997
Hardcover : 9780791432334, 219 pages, March 1997

Alternative formats available from:

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1
Nietzsche

A Knight's Move: Nietzsche and the Genealogy of Russian Formalism

Russian Modernism: A Merry Science

The Modernist Paradigm and the Digestion of History

2
Parody

History as a Form of Parody/Parody as a Form of History

Parody, Bodily Remains, and the Leftovers of History

Tynianov and Bakhtin: Parody as a Malfunctioning Gramophone of History

On DerRIDEOlogy: Nietzschean Laughter in Bakhtin and Derrida

Bakhtin and the Post-Structuralist Condition

Writing and Laughter: Bakhtin and Derrida

3
Interval

The Interval and the Structure of Temporality

Maiakovsky and the Remains of the Literary Canon

The Interval as the Origin of the Work of Art: Akhmatova, Mandel'stam, Pasternak

4
Genre

The Literary Fact and the Law of Genre

Genre: A Borderline of Literary Space

Genre: A Borderline of Literary Time

5
Mausoleum

The Mummy: "The Most Glorious Victory of Form"

Maiakovsky and the Ventriloquism of History

Russian Formalism and the Birth of the Mausoleum

6
Museum

"The Wax Effigy" and the Form/aldehyde of History

The Kunstkamera : Museum in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The Circular Ruins of History

The Spurs of the Monument

"It Is a Dying History": After Modernism

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Examines the influence of Nietzsche on Russian Formalists, Russian Modernism, and Mikhail Bakhtin, reinforcing the importance of the modernist theoreticians by reading them in the contemporary theoretical context.

Description

Throwing new light on the important thesis about the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on Russian formalists and Russian modernism, this book presents this theme in the context of relevant research, and convincingly defines the extent of the claims advanced in the body of the text.

The author's close readings and competent incorporation of critical literature paradigmatically exemplify the truth of how precisely indeed literature 'reflects' the life of human societies; equally importantly, they also show that literature reveals its secrets only to the gaze of astute and alert readers. Together with a thorough knowledge and pertinent application of the scholarship in the field, and with frequent flashes of revealing insights and suggestive connections, close readings constitute the book's most consistently outstanding aspect, giving it increasingly more depth and dimension.

David Farrell Krell's first work of fiction, Nietzsche: A Novel, was published by SUNY Press. Krell is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago.

Reviews

"The book tackles a subject and a national literature that need and deserve wider recognition and a competent insertion into the mainstream of post-structuralist thought that Western literatures have enjoyed without comparable prejudice for over a quarter of a century." -- Piotr Parlej, Russell Sage College