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Activity Theory and 'Creative' Soviet-Marxism are still overlocked by contemporary theorists. This volume is a correction to this tragic omission.
List of contents
Foreword – Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen
I. DIALECTICS OF THE IDEAL
E.V. Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism: Introduction to Dialectics of the Ideal, Alex Levant
Dialectics of the Ideal (2009), Evald Ilyenkov
II. CONTEXTS
Ilyenkov in the Context of Soviet Philosophical Culture: An Interview with Sergey Mareev, Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen
Prospects for a Cultural-Historical Psychology of Intelligence, Birger Siebert
Evald Ilyenkov, the Soviet Spinozist, Vesa Oittinen
III. COMMENTARIES
Reality of the Ideal, Andrey Maidansky
Metamorphoses of Meaning: The Concept of the Ideal from a Semiotic Perspective, Tarja Knuuttila
Evald Ilyenkov’s Dialectics of Abstract and Concrete and the Recent Value-Form Debate, Vesa Oittinen and Paula Rauhala
Emancipating Open Marxism: E.V. Ilyenkov’s Post-Cartesian Anti-Dualism, Alex Levant
IV. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
Published works by Ilyenkov
References
About the author
Alex Levant, Ph.D. (Social and Political Thought - York University), M.A. (Theory, Culture, Politics - Trent University), B.A. (English Literature and Film Studies - Wilfrid Laurier University). His areas of research include critical media theory, political economy of communication, cultural studies, globalization, social movements, and critical 'race' theory, among others.
Vesa Oittinen, Ph. D., born in 1951, is Professor at the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on the history of modern philosophy, especially German, Scandinavian, and Russian philosophy. Forthcoming publications include books on Evald Ilyenkov and on the so-called Activity Approach in Soviet philosophy, both with Historical Materialism
Summary
In Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism Levant and Oittinen provide a window into the subterranean tradition of ‘creative’ Soviet Marxism, which developed on the margins of the Soviet academe and remains largely outside the orbit of contemporary theory in the West. With his ‘activity approach’, E.V. Ilyenkov, its principal figure in the post-Stalin period, makes a substantial contribution toward an anti-reductionist Marxist theory of the subject.
This highly original approach should be of interest to theorists who seek to avoid economic and cultural reductionism as well as the malaise of postmodern relativism. This volume features Levant’s translation of Ilyenkov’s Dialectics of the Ideal (2009), which remained unpublished until thirty years after the author’s tragic suicide in 1979, as well as additional reflections and context by contemporary scholars.
Foreword
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