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100 years of the Russian Revolution is the theme of 'Estudos Avançados' #91

by Richard Meckien - published Dec 18, 2017 11:15 AM - - last modified Mar 08, 2019 08:58 AM
Rights: Original version in Portuguese by Mauro Bellesa.

Capa da revista "Estudos Avançados" 91

Throughout much of the 20th century, "there was no region or individual not living under the cloud of dream and gunpowder" that was formed in Russia in 1917, according to Bruno Barreto Gomide, a professor of Russian literature at USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH).

Various aspects of the cultural, political and social history of the Russian Revolution have been analyzed in a dossier organized by Gomide for issue 91 of the journal "Estudos Avançados", launched this month.

With contributions of researchers from the United Kingdom, Brazil and Argentina, "Centenary of the Russian Revolution" consists of one part dedicated to the sphere of culture, ideas and art, and another focused on the political and social history of the revolution.

In the first section, Galin Tihanov, from the University of London's Queen Mary College, addresses issues of the Russian-Soviet intellectual history that are "rarely attended by Brazilian scholars," according to Gomide, such as language theories and Eurosianism, and proposes a redefinition of the place of intellectual currents such as Marxism and Slavophilism in the course of the Soviet period. Evgeny Dobrenko, from the University of Sheffield, discusses the history of Soviet art and cultural institutions, and critically analyzes the deployment and significance of socialist realism. Andrea Gullotta, from the University of Glasgow, outlines a detailed panorama of the literature produced in the gulag, a system of labour camps maintained in the Soviet Union.

The second part of the dossier opens with a report by Martín Baña, from the University of Buenos Aires, on the main historiographical trends regarding the political-social aspects of the revolution, such as the "political sovietology of the Cold War, the fundamental contribution offered by the revisionist strand of social history from the 1970s onwards, and the "cultural turnaround," which is a strong vein of recent studies." The dossier ends with articles by Daniel Aarão Reis, from the Fluminense Federal University, and Lincoln Secco, from FFLCH-USP, on some key moments of the revolutionary cycles of 1905 and 1921.

Urbanism

"Urbanism, Society and Culture" is the theme of the second set of texts of the issue. The dossier was organized by architect and graphic designer Ricardo Ohtake, director of the Tomie Ohtake Institute and current holder of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Art, Culture and Science, a partnership between the IEA and the Itaú Cultural Institute.

For the constitution of this thematic section, the starting point was to consider that the discussion about Brazilian cities "could and should" permeate the contact between urbanism and different fields of knowledge, according to Ohtake.

This is why the essays explore "the possibilities of historical and critical reflection on the fields of urbanism, art and culture," from four thematic axes: the construction of the city, the historical dimension of human action in the city, the city as synthesis of knowledge, and the future of the Brazilian city. These four themes respectively feature the articles by Daniel Corsi, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Priscyla Gomes, and Nelson Brissac Peixoto.

Psychoanalysis

According to the editor of the journal, Alfredo Bosi, the third dossier of the issue, entitled "Psychoanalysis and Culture," with articles by Nelson da Silva Junior, Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker, Vladimir Safatle and Pedro Ambra, "illustrates the breadth of interactions between psychoanalysis and culture, confirming the fruitfulness of psychoanalytic methods applied to human sciences and literature."

The articles discuss the changing of the place and social functioning of science in culture, the narratives of suffering in the Brazilian literature of the current decade, the political implications of transference concepts, analytic act and subjective destitution as elaborated by Jacques Lacan from the 1960s, and the possibility of determining the symbolic character of gender identity processes from the constitution of alliance groups and policies.

The issue also has six other texts: a testimony by anthropologist Betty Mindlin on Ecléa Bosi, a professor emeritus from USP's Institute of Psychology (IP) who died on July 10, an article on engineering of complex systems, an analysis of illness indicators in higher education due to the overload of work, and reviews of the books "Should We Fear Russia," by Dmitri Trenin, "O Mundo Sitiado – A Poesia Brasileira e a Segunda Guerra Mundial," by Murilo Marcondes, and "Desdizer e Antes," by Antonio Carlos Sechin.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Centenary of the Russian Revolution

Bruno Barreto Gomide
Galin Tihanov
Evgeny Dobrenko
Andrea Gullotta
Martín Baña
Daniel Aarão Reis
Lincoln Secco

Urbanism, Society and Culture

Ricardo Ohtake
Daniel Corsi
Lilia Moritz Schwarcz
Priscyla Gomes
Nelson Brissac Peixoto

Psychoanalysis and Culture

Nelson da Silva Junior
Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker
Vladimir Safatle
Pedro Ambra

Additional Articles

José Roberto Castilho Piqueira and Sérgio Mascarenhas de Oliveira
Celina Hoffmann, Roselaine Ruviaro Zanini, Gilnei Luiz de Moura, Vânia Medianeira Flores Costa and Emanuelly Comoretto

Testimony

Betty Mindlin

Reviews

Lenina Pomeranz
Betina Bischof
Marcos Pasche