{"title":"On Tolstoy and Foucault: Intellectuals, Conscience, and the Entanglements of Bio-Power","authors":"Vadim Shkolnikov","doi":"10.1016/j.ruslit.2023.05.002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper examines the new understanding of power that emerges in the late works of Leo Tolstoy, as an early premonition of ideas subsequently elaborated by Michel Foucault, particularly his seminal conception of bio-politics. In works such as <em>The Death of Ivan Ilyich</em> (1886), <em>The Kreutzer Sonata</em> (1889), and particularly the novel <em>Resurrection</em> (1899), Tolstoy undertakes precisely the kind of “struggle against power” which Foucault identifies as a fundamental task of the modern intellectual: “a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is most invisible and insidious”. In confronting the manifold manifestations of a new logic of power – a logic that he never manages to grasp fully – Tolstoy continues to rely on analytical perspectives he ostensibly denounces. Yet no one went further than Tolstoy in acknowledging and combating his own complicity with the system of power, both as a landowner and an intellectual. From this perspective Tolstoy heralds the transformation of the intellectual and conscience subsequently called for by Foucault.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":43192,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"RUSSIAN LITERATURE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304347923000108","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, SLAVIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper examines the new understanding of power that emerges in the late works of Leo Tolstoy, as an early premonition of ideas subsequently elaborated by Michel Foucault, particularly his seminal conception of bio-politics. In works such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), and particularly the novel Resurrection (1899), Tolstoy undertakes precisely the kind of “struggle against power” which Foucault identifies as a fundamental task of the modern intellectual: “a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is most invisible and insidious”. In confronting the manifold manifestations of a new logic of power – a logic that he never manages to grasp fully – Tolstoy continues to rely on analytical perspectives he ostensibly denounces. Yet no one went further than Tolstoy in acknowledging and combating his own complicity with the system of power, both as a landowner and an intellectual. From this perspective Tolstoy heralds the transformation of the intellectual and conscience subsequently called for by Foucault.
期刊介绍:
Russian Literature combines issues devoted to special topics of Russian literature with contributions on related subjects in Croatian, Serbian, Czech, Slovak and Polish literatures. Moreover, several issues each year contain articles on heterogeneous subjects concerning Russian Literature. All methods and viewpoints are welcomed, provided they contribute something new, original or challenging to our understanding of Russian and other Slavic literatures. Russian Literature regularly publishes special issues devoted to: • the historical avant-garde in Russian literature and in the other Slavic literatures • the development of descriptive and theoretical poetics in Russian studies and in studies of other Slavic fields.