"Books are something like portals"

Hypermedia and garden mountaineering: what and how are the authors of the almanac "Translit"

“Translit” - the St. Petersburg almanac published since 2005 about the theory and practice of literature, its issues are devoted to the regimes of writing, the social conditions of literature, the gender framework of poetry and other phenomena of literary reality. Gorky talked with the authors of “Translit” about the soteriology of art, distant reading, assemblies and airships.

Pavel Arsenyev, poet, critic, editor -in -chief of the Almanac "Translite"

The last thing I read from major things was the “science in action” by Bruno Latur, a book about the ways of being scientific facts. Latur is such a sociologist of science that is broken out from the disciplinary limits of the sociology of science and drifts in the direction of ontology. Now, together with his laboratory, he leads the website of Modes of Existence , where the methods of being not only scientific facts, but also other modalities of existence are investigated: in addition to microbes, under a microscope, there are such forms of existence, poetic text and so on. Very ambitious taxonomy.

As for “science in action”, it seemed to me that the natural and accurate sciences was very lucky with the presence of this book. Perhaps it seems to scientists that she reveals their professional secrets or tricks, but nevertheless, the humanities cannot boast of anything like that. The disciplinary affiliation of Latur himself is quite difficult to indicate, the name of its sociologist of science requires very serious reservations: trying to shift the power of microsociology and socioanalysis of Bourdieu, he experiences a strong influence of mediology and what can be called technological specialized (Leroy-Guran and others). From the point of view of Latur, society, technology, culture are completely equal factors involved in the creation of facts/objects of our daily experience. There is no society for Latur, but not the way Ms. Thatcher would like, but because society is always saturated with technical contracts and coercions. And vice versa: there is no pure technology that “challenges” and which needs to be humanized, the technique is penetrated through and through social logics.

Latur clearly shows concrete examples - the inventions of the first computer in Silicon Valley or Pasteurization in France - as between different authorities (which are always much more than two) negotiations occur and how without causal logic there is a translation of social hopes, expectations and fantasies into technical inventions, as they develop into a certain constellation, which he calls a “black box”. It seemed interesting to me to try to apply such a method of analysis to the science of literature that is much more conservative than the science of society and even more accurate sciences, and often in an implicit way retains non -critical ideas about genius, originality and other strange things, not paying attention to the materiality of communication, the means of writing, which, as you know, are also known over our thoughts. ”

Another author who occupies me recently is Tierry de Duv, the author of several books about Marseille Duchan. Both authors seem to me determining the current state of the field of art. The book that interests me is called Kant (D ') Après Duchamp, which can be translated as “Kant (read) after Duchan” or “Kant according to Duchan” - there is a whole bunch of values, each of which turns the usual order in studying aesthetics. De Duv approached Duchain Kantian, but his approach turned Kant himself as a result.

The main hypothesis of de Duva boils down to the fact that the Duchan formula coincides with the categorical imperative, but is not ethical, like Kant, but aesthetic character. Roughly speaking, Dyushan addresses us the imperative Fais n'importe quoi (what is another book that is called), that is, “Do anything!” Or “do what!”, But so that it is a contemporary art (compare with the Kantian “do it so that this can be a universal law”). This implies complete contingency, accompanied, however, an index indicating the aesthetic self -awareness of such an arbitrary practice. Contemporary art is an area to which anything can relate to (or what), and at the same time, none of the products of conventional practice has a guarantee of the calculation. We can say that the project of contemporary art inherits in the historical avant -garde is soteriological in nature, art saves a huge number of practices from invisibility and oblivion.

However, it is not necessary to confuse this with the notorious formula, according to which anything can be art, if the author or mysterious powerful critics called it that. In addition to the desire of the author (or the solution of critic) to consider it made by contemporary art, there are several more “enoncial” conditions that must be satisfied so that the fact of art takes place. In the same way as for a successful speech act is not enough for one will (or spoken phrase) of the author, a certain number of contextual and institutional factors are involved in the production of art facts (which can be compared with the production of scientific facts in Latur). At least a doubt should respond: if the audience begins to argue, the matter will already be done because, as we know from the laws of logic, the denial includes the statement. If Latur gravitates to anthropology and mediology, then de Duv-to the Anglo-Saxon logical-positive tradition. He focuses on the teachings of the philosopher James Stuart Mill about his own names - they call, but do not characterize the name: if everyone who is called Peter or James, there will be nothing in common between these people. De Duv spreads the logic of his own names to contemporary art, arguing that art is not a generic concept, as Badya would say, but only the procedure for assigning to disparate objects of the named after his own. It is for this reason that it can be said that there is nothing left of art except the name, ”moreover, it turns out to be the main bet, or even a medium, which is affirming their naming, named-named artists, as de Duv calls them. Ultimately, it is important not that the artist sincerely expressed his feelings, but whether these acts of naming are successful. And here John Austin’s crown already appeared, and with him (and Mill) already the entire analytical Anglo -Saxon tradition. That is, the Belgian-Canadian art critic Duv performs a rather interesting synthesis, using the Anglo-Saxon logic and the philosophy of the language to art.

Since we approached the philosophy of the language, the third book, about which I will say, will be the “Marxism and Philosophy of the Language” by Valentin Voloshinov. Voloshinov is one of the participants of the so -called Bakhtin circle, which included Pavel Medvedev, Lev Pumpyansky, Konstantin Vaginov and other researchers and writers. Unfortunately, this book is quite little known - everyone heard about Bakhtin’s carnival and polyphony, but some Side Projects did not receive attention. Voloshinov was more a linguist than the theoretician of literature, in his book he criticizes the two main branches of linguistic teachings at that time - French and German. The French-speaking tradition (in the person of Saussure) is criticized by him for positivism, universal-grammatory misconception and underestimation of the creative and, as they would say today, a user measurement in the life of the language. On the other hand, in the German philosophy of the language (in particular, with Fossler), to which the Russian was always closer, he saw a vertical bias, painful attachment to the roots (both in the sense of etymology and national mythology) and the desire to find the source, which would today be called politically unsafe idealism. Speaking strongly, we can say that in the German linguistics for Voloshinov there is too much spirit, and in French there is too much formalism, accounting.

In this situation, Voloshinov proposed an interesting model at the intersection of two traditions: a creative attitude to the language from the German “sciences of the spirit” is taken, but it is sifted through a grammatical grill. Thus, the secular philosophy of the language is obtained, taking into account the temporary and dynamic measurement of speech activity. Unfortunately, this model was not accepted by Soviet linguistics, and the fate of Bakhtin’s heritage and his circle developed tragically. Nevertheless, both the French school of discourse analysis and the Anglo -Saxon pragmatic philosophy of the language moved to this model after the war. Today we can say that those little -known Soviet linguists have laid the foundations of the modern philosophy of the language, and, consequently, most sciences of the humanitarian cycle, studying practices and competencies (instead of “genuine sources” and “true structures”).

Finally, the last book read I would like to call the artistic one, but in fact it will be partly theoretical - we are talking about Robert Valser's “Robber”, the first and almost the only Swiss modernist, open posthumously. He talked with Kafka and Benjamin, but led an extremely isolated life, most of which he spent in a psychiatric clinic - a characteristic literary fate on the verge of insanity and conscious efforts to become a writer, staying in the epicenter of discussions of the era and almost oblivion. The plot of the “robber”, as befits good modernist prose, is extremely unintelligible, but all the more interesting, because this is not about the events that can be retold, but about how the action itself migrates to the writer’s desk. Walzer describes how he is written - more precisely, how it is not written.

Valzer wrote quite a lot, but almost everything exists in fragments - however, it is impossible to say whether this was a manifestation of an author’s experiment or negligence. Subsequently, it was this fragmentation that will be meaningful by its deciphers, publishers and critics as a programmatic property of his prose. His letter has the same remarkable mediological features that emphasize the impact of writing tools and generally material circumstances of production on writing technology: Valzer wrote exclusively on the fields of already painted sheets or newspapers. We can say that Walzer (even if he was not the first writer to see his books during his lifetime) was the first writer to face a clean sheet. It is worth adding to this that he used a certain encrypted cursive, which did not allow to evaluate the ingenuity of such writing practice, until there was a philologist who deciphered all this and, in fact, gathered Valser as a literary fact.

This intervention and distribution of authorship is almost the most interesting in the phenomenon of Valser: on the one hand, the modernist demiurge, on the other, is some kind of “unfinished”, established retroactively by a philologist in the second half of the century. It was Walzer and this unjustified being prompted me to the idea of ​​actor-senior studies of literature. As Pasteur microbes (according to Lature) should also agree to participate in his experiments, so this philologist should help Valser become Valser. I’m not talking about the fact that, in addition to human actors, all these “friends and subsequently, guardians who retained Karakuli, many remarkable material assemblies and somatic techniques were involved, which allowed this untidy (but combining so many trajectories and interests) a manuscript box, almost a“ black box ”, to reach the reader, despite the fact that the reader, despite the fact that the reader, despite the fact that Robert Walzer himself froze in a snow near his psychiatric hospital.

If Maxim Gorky introduced a new topic into Russian literature, showing how people live at the very day of society, and twisted - new methods of using language means, then the Walzer works at the following level of literary innovation. This is a media practical level, the study of which we are engaged in a seminar on “pragmatic poetics” and which is no longer connected with a theme or a dictionary, but with the very method of writing - if you like, a way of using written supplies. This method, as we know from the experience of Akaki Akakievich, who rewritten circulars with a stuck tongue, always includes not only tools, but also some kind of gesturing of the letter. In the case of Walser, we observe an exemplary birth of a method from the spirit of material everyday life and the bodies of the writer.

Eduard Lukoyanov, poet

Calculating the book read from the beginning of the year is very problematic. I can only say that I read less than in past years, but probably more than an average Russian. It began to read less, because fatigue from fiction came. But this is a common place-it has long been known that the time has passed the time, people want non-fiction. Almost all the novels that are now coming out are not at all necessary to read. Here is the "humility" of Welbek. It is enough to read fifty pages to understand: yes, Welbek, yes, witty, yes, I have already read all this in his previous novels. But Dmitry Volchek published Peter Nadash. Prose on the verge of a brilliant, but you can’t go further than the three hundredth page - the clip consciousness no longer stretches the European modernist romance. But this is my problem. The following books were made the greatest impression in the past year.

Joe Sakko, Palestine is one of the most significant books that was published this year in Russian. This is the first experience of a graphic report, written by the author during a deep emotional crisis. Sakko went to Palestine, where then the Arabs led the first intifada, speaking in Russian, is an uprising. A very bold find: such tragic and confusing events to convey to the reader through the “low” comic book genre. The camera pretends to be objective and thereby misleads the viewer. The pencil reserves the right to subjectivity, and in this sense more honest. This is very close to me.

Alexander Ignatenko, “Zenith of Islamic Thought” is the monumental work of the scientist, with one of the books of which my fascination with the Middle East began. This is a monograph on medieval Arabic philosophy and classical caliphate in general. A serious scientific text alternates with prosaic retreats in which the author leads an imaginary dialogue with thinkers of the past. To be honest, Ignatenko is a weak prose writer, but such a sincere romantic love of the researcher in the subject of research is what I would like to strive for.

Anna Kavan, “Ice” is one of the strangest books that fell into my hands. It is quite difficult to explain what is happening in the novel: an endless dream about the end of the world, in which all possible ideas about space and time are violated. “Ice” is attributed to the direction “Slipstim” - the genre at the junction of fantasy, realism and avant -garde letter. In general, a complete rupture of such concepts as “high” and “low” art. It's a shame that the book went unnoticed with us, although it was published in Hell Margin.

Nikolai Platoshkin, “The Sandinist Revolution in Nicaragua. Background and consequences ” - in recent years this book has probably made the most deep impression. When I saw a huge red volume that you can kill, I ran to the checkout, without even opening it. Already at home he began to read the preface - he did not go further, completely ugly revered. "Brotherly Nicaragua", "Bratsk Republic, the first to recognize the fraternal southern Ossetia." In general, this turned out to be not a monograph about the revolutionary movement, but with some kind of transcript of the Politburo meeting. Thanks to the author-now I know how to constrain an interesting topic in general.

In English, I do not read as much as it should, I mainly limit myself to the columns in the "Gardian" and "Esquire". Relatively recently, the biography of Morrissi came out, so I read it in the original, because no one will ever translate it into Russian, and if it translates, it will almost certainly be a failure. Among the foreign authors, my tastes are quite simple: Kutzey, Ian Mcueen. In English literature, the tradition of a strong classic novel that we have lost is still strong, so that my preferences may be rustic, but this is simply not enough in Russian. I do not miss the books of Jonathan Littlela, but I am waiting for from him not novels, but wonderful essays like “Chomsky notebooks” and “Chechnya. The third year. " I follow the Assiists after Dragan Kuyunzhich is such a Serbian philosopher and literary critic who writes a lot and productively about the Balkan question. He is called the successor of Derrida, but, unlike the deconstructivist, he writes fascinatingly clearly. He knows Russian, often happens in Moscow, you can read it in a "new literary review."

Mikhail Kurtov, philosopher, media theoretic, candidate of philosophical sciences

I almost never read “for myself”-I basically read what is required for some research; Therefore, the task is rather to come up with a study for which it would be interesting to read. The strategy of my research reading is the search for intersections between clearly unrelated areas, the combination of the divided so that it is held. Меня редко интересует книга или автор сами по себе, но всегда в аспекте полупризрачных сверхдалеких взаимоотсылок. По ритму такое чтение можно сравнить с путешествием на дирижабле: скорость передвижения не очень большая и не очень маленькая (медленное чтение чередуется с «диагональным»), но при этом есть свобода от проложенных на земле и в небе маршрутов (то есть академических стандартов и интеллектуальных мод), а также возможность делать бессрочные остановки. Конечно, у меня есть пул авторов, которых я регулярно перечитываю (Юнгер, Бланшо, переписка Пушкина), но в основном читаю то, о существовании чего еще вчера даже не подозревал и что вряд ли когда-нибудь перечитаю.

С начала года через мои руки прошли несколько сотен книг, большую часть названий которых уже не вспомню. Бумажных книг практически не касаюсь, оффлайновые библиотеки не люблю, углубляюсь в цепочки источников настолько, насколько это позволяет сеть (применительно к моим целям этого, как правило, достаточно). Для каталогизации прочитанного несколько лет назад написал скрипт на Питоне (не удовлетворившись существующими программами-библиотекарями), который переводит мои заметки, сделанные в plain text, в рубрицированный html-каталог, — но сейчас мало им пользуюсь.

Поскольку выбор книг диктуется предметом исследований, узор чтения каждый сезон непредсказуем. За прошедшие полгода самым большим читательским потрясением была, пожалуй, двенадцатитомная энциклопедия по гуманитарной географии, изданная в 2009 году под редакцией Найджела Трифта и Боба Китчина. Потрясает охват тем и сюжетов: эта энциклопедия — лучшее на сегодняшний день доказательство, что все науки о человеке с момента появления в XVIII веке были не чем иным, как науками о Земле. Без знания о Земле во всей ее рассеянности и пористости мы будем вечно обречены тащить на условную планету Солярис (имею в виду известную экранизацию) свой дом с прудом. Другая запомнившаяся книга — «Поющие неандертальцы» (2005) когнитивного археолога Стивена Митена. Ее главный тезис — язык и музыка происходят из единой коммуникативной системы, которую автор называет Hmmmmm : это одновременно мелодичное мычание предков Homo sapiens и акроним, обозначающий набор характеристик доречевой коммуникации ( Holistic , manipulative , multi-modal , musical , mimetic ). Хотя мне симпатичен сам тезис, я ловлю себя на мысли, что еще больше мне понравилось название книги: когда вспоминаю его, почему-то всегда улучшается настроение. Еще одно открытие — натурфилософские труды профессора Рижского политехнического училища Вильгельма Фридриха Оствальда. Это, кажется, единственный философ, получивший Нобелевскую премию по химии. Его теорию энергетизма я планирую когда-нибудь использовать для описания художественных практик. В том, что касается русскоязычного чтения, этот период отмечен встречей с книгой математика Романа Михайлова «Равинагар» (2016). В рекламной манере — и, разумеется, не исчерпывающим образом — я бы охарактеризовал этот текст как смесь ориентальных зарисовок Мишо, полевых психиатрических исследований Р. Д. Лэйнга и мемуаров Гротендика. На фоне усталого академического бубнежа и вымученного филологического авангарда этот текст прозвучал свежо, у автора яркое литературное воображение, подпитываемое тайной числа (точнее, исчислимого пространства).

В общем реестре прочитанного нельзя не упомянуть раздел, который я бы условно назвал алеаторным чтением: это случайные книги, от которых невозможно уклониться, притягательные в своей необязательности и бессмысленности. Такой раздел есть у каждого. Например, недавно я взял в руки книгу «Альпинарий в вашем саду» (1989) и не мог оторваться: мне совершенно безразличны цветы и цветоводство, но образ высокогорных растений, спускающихся в советские «сотки», превращал скучные садоводческие советы и ботанические классификации в этнографический роман. Роль таких случайных книг особая. У нас нет универсального рецепта познания мира через тексты, нет общей карты чтения. Если вы принадлежите к академии, вы прокачиваете скилл чтения вглубь — довольно ценный сегодня, поскольку он требует редких качеств: способностей к аскезе, концентрации, замедлению. И все мы теперь так или иначе владеем скиллом чтения вширь («вики-моуд»): сегодня нетрудно читать разное, хотя нужно понимать, что это разнообразие мнимое, оно всегда ограничено интеллектуальными модами и коммуникационной инфраструктурой (настоящее расширение в принципе может дать академия, но она же блокирует его узкой специализацией). Однако целенаправленное движение по этим двум осям — вглубь и вширь — никогда не гарантирует отсутствие пропусков или белых пятен на карте. Для компенсации этого недостатка читательской механики и нужны такие случайные книги: это что-то вроде порталов, мгновенно переносящих нас в неизвестный словарь, это знание, которое мы не сможем использовать сразу или в этой жизни, но которое будет дожидаться своего часа, как руины инопланетных цивилизаций.

Самым же здоровым во всех смыслах чтением с начала года для меня были учебники по общей алгебре и работы русских анархистов (Кропоткин, Боровой, документы и материалы, опубликованные ассоциацией «Российская политическая энциклопедия»). Если говорить о каких-то рекомендациях, то их я бы порекомендовал всем в самую первую очередь.

Евгения Суслова, поэт, переводчик, филолог, литературный критик

Мне кажется, что сегодня уже нельзя говорить о чтении как о некоторой универсальной и общепонятной практике. С одной стороны, можно говорить о режимах чтения. Первый — медленное чтение, например, когда готовишь к изданию книгу. Второй — очень быстрый, стремящийся к дистантному [англ. distant reading — прим. Ed.]. С другой, книга перестала, на мой взгляд, мыслиться как нечто единое, ее статус проблематизирован. Книгу сегодня можно рассматривать как корпус, но не как просто некое «собрание», а, скорее, комплекс языковых и неязыковых смыслов. Гипермедиа сделали свое дело в плане внутреннего пересобирания идеи книги.

С некоторых пор я уже не читаю книгами, поэтому на вопрос «сколько я читаю» ответить не могу. Много времени уходит на книги по цифровой гуманитаристике, но это, скорее, быстрое чтение. В последнее время я работала с массивом текстов по теории интерфейсов и визуализации. Работы по визуализации очень важны, так как они говорят об изменении текстовой связности, то есть о том, каковы отношения между различными элементами текста, об образе текстуальности как таковой. Это имеет для меня принципиальное значение, так как основное мое занятие — это письмо и медиаискусство. Книги, показавшиеся особенно важными, — «Компьютеры как театр» Бренды Лорель, в которой рассматривается цифровая перформативность, и «Программируемое зрение» Венди Х.К. Чун, в которой речь идет о софте как идеологии. Лорель, классик цифровой литературы, говорит об особом модусе нашего существования в цифровом расширении — перформативном: наше компьютерное поведение может быть исполнено, как исполняемы файлы. В связи с этим можно говорить, что меняется структура самого события. Это уже не бадьюанское двухчастное событие, образ которого собирается через настоящее, но событие, которое можно назвать двухчастным иначе: это до поры до времени закрытый набор возможностей, логика организации которых должна быть понята и исполнена. Компьютер становится зоной, бесконечно порождающей границы, как временно автономные зоны, свободные от необходимости реализовывать заданное. Книга Венди Х.К. Чун продолжает эту тему, но совсем иначе. Автор исследует, как программирование и дигитальные режимы видения связаны с идеологией. С какого-то момента идеология теряет образ языка, перестает быть декларативной, но являет себя через невидимые зоны операционального опыта. Поскольку зоны этого опыта отрефлексировать во всей их сложности невозможно, возникает новое невидимое измерение, а идеология задает новые сферы невидимого, но исполняемого опыта.

Важный процесс для меня — чтение рукописей поэтических книг. Так случается, что книга может быть прочитана сообществом, но выходит намного позже. В этом отношении для меня очень важна книга Никиты Левитского (название раскрывать не буду), ставящая вопрос о перераспределении потоков материальности в связи с проблемами памяти и воображения. Это огромная работа, постоянно ветвящаяся, разрастающаяся, трансформирующаяся, у нее в принципе нет (возможно, и не должно быть) центрального потока, организующего остальные. Речь идет, скорее, о перцептивном хаосе, который сознательно не обобщается до знакомых предметов и концептов, которыми можно оперировать. В книге зафиксированы потоки в чистом виде, но они не могут быть исполнены по определению.

Открыта крауд-фандинг кампания нового выпуска #19 [Транслит]: объектно-ориентированная поэзия. Поддержать издание номера и заказать экземпляр на свой почтовый адрес можно здесь .