On Tolstoy and Foucault: Intellectuals, Conscience, and the Entanglements of Bio-Power

IF 0.3 3区 文学 0 LITERATURE, SLAVIC
Vadim Shkolnikov
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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.

论托尔斯泰与福柯:知识分子、良知与生物力量的纠缠
本文考察了列夫·托尔斯泰晚期作品中出现的对权力的新理解,作为米歇尔·福柯随后阐述的思想的早期预感,特别是他的生命政治的开创性概念。在《伊凡·伊里奇之死》(1886)、《克鲁策奏鸣曲》(1889),尤其是小说《复活》(1899)等作品中,托尔斯泰恰恰承担了福柯认为是现代知识分子基本任务的那种“与权力斗争”:“一场旨在揭示和破坏权力的斗争,在权力最不可见、最隐蔽的地方”。面对一种新的权力逻辑的多种表现形式——一种他从未完全掌握的逻辑——托尔斯泰继续依靠他表面上谴责的分析视角。然而,没有人比托尔斯泰走得更远,他承认并反对自己作为地主和知识分子与权力体系的共谋。从这个角度来看,托尔斯泰预示了随后福柯所呼吁的知识分子和良知的转变。
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来源期刊
RUSSIAN LITERATURE
RUSSIAN LITERATURE LITERATURE, SLAVIC-
CiteScore
0.60
自引率
0.00%
发文量
50
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.
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