e-flux Journal #88

<p>Some time around 1882, God was pronounced dead. For certain Russian thinkers of the era, this loss provided a building opportunity: where the place of one god closes, space for another one opens. Unlike most established schools of thought, Russian cosmism does not present a singular vision, a consistent epistemology, or a unified theory. On the contrary: the ideas of its nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century protagonists are often so divergent and contradictory that they appear incoherent, paradoxical, or delirious…</p> <p><strong>Editorial—Russian Cosmism</strong><br /> Editors</p> <p><strong>Timeline of Russian Cosmism</strong><br /> Anastasia Gacheva, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Anton Vidokle</p> <p><strong>The Stofflichkeit of the Universe: Alexander Bogdanov and the Soviet Avant-Garde</strong><br /> Maria Chehonadskih</p> <p><strong>Optimists of the Future Past Perfect</strong><br /> Arseny Zhilyaev</p> <p><strong>Fedorov’s Geographies of Time</strong><br /> Trevor Paglen</p> <p><strong>Anagogia in Cosmism and Communism</strong><br /> Keti Chukhrov</p> <p><strong>Genealogy of Humanity</strong><br /> Boris Groys</p> <p><strong>Russian Cosmism: A Foretaste of Revolution</strong><br /> Marina Simakova</p> <p><strong>Contingency and Necessity in Evald Ilyenkov’s Communist Cosmology</strong><br /> Alexei Penzin</p> <p><strong>How to Keep Communism Aloft: Labor, Energy, and the Model Cosmos in Soviet Cinema</strong><br /> Robert Bird</p>