The Ethics of Postcommunism : History and Social Praxis in Russia

Prozorov offers a radical reinterpretation of contemporary Russian politics in terms of Agamben's philosophy. Reconstructing Agamben's conception of the end of history, that challenges the Hegelian thesis, Prozorov approaches post-communist Russia as a post-historical terrain, in which the teleological dimension of politics has been deactivated. The Ethics of Postcommunism offers a radical reinterpretation of contemporary Russian politics in terms of Giorgio Agamben's political philosophy. Reconstructing Agamben's conception of the end of history that challenges the well-known Hegelian thesis, Prozorov approaches post-communist Russia as a post-historical terrain, in which the teleological dimension of politics has been deactivated. Tracing the suspension of the historical dialectic from the late-soviet period to the Medvedev presidency, the author develops a paradigm of 'inoperative' social praxis proper to the post-communist condition Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Universal Postcommunism: Kojève and Agamben on the End of History....Pages 1-37 A Time Like No Other: Russian Politics after the End of History....Pages 38-88 The Janitor Generation: The Ethics of Disengagement in the Late-Soviet Period....Pages 89-136 From a Shining Void: The Dialectic of Bespredel in Postcommunist Social Praxis....Pages 137-197 The Invisible Victory: Experimentum Linguae and the Appropriation of Anomie....Pages 198-248 Back Matter....Pages 249-266