ABSTRACT
What follows is an attempt to come to terms with a certain contemporary global event, to offer diagnosis of its symptoms as well as prognosis of its effects, and to conceive of what is a single theme in three distinct directions. First, we must acknowledge and analyse the transformation [povorot] currently underway in both Russia and the West, the change in the socio-historical experience of life and of the world, and the related upheaval(s) in the sphere of social relations and language [kommunikatsiia and diskurs]. The changes currently taking place are, it would seem, so pronounced and so radical that it might be possible even to speak of a revolution, were it not for the fact that the nature of what is taking place is contradictory to the conception of revolution that has emerged in modern times, and in fact questions what are now ‘traditional’ ideas of revolution. Second, we will examine how this new historical experience is reflected and refracted in the sciences of historical experience, more commonly referred to as the Humanities. In more strictly subjectspecific Western discussions within the ‘academy’, just as in the disconnected, more often spontaneous and chaotic reactions and voices in Russian resurrections of the pre-revolutionary genre of ‘free flight’ [svobodnyi polet], the most diverse phenomena are characterised without any principled consideration of their causes and prerequisites – without consideration, that is, of what lies beyond the text. In order to orientate oneself within (and not simply to adapt oneself to) these new conditions, what would seem to be necessary above all is a more profound sense of historical reflection. Third, and finally, I will offer a personal account of the conduct of my own research and teaching. The personal experience and orientation of the philosopher, the literary scholar or of, let’s say, the ‘ideological critic’ acquires a new topicality in conditions of radical disorientation and depersonalisation. The sharp differentiation of what were not so long ago shared ideas and concepts, a common language and ‘horizon of expectations’, once again poses, for both the Western ‘intellectual’ and the Russian ‘gumanitarii’, the problem of self-definition within the institutional context and in relation to his or her professional activity.
