Soboleva, Maja
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
In my paper, I first focus on Aleksandr Bogdanov’s systems theoretical understanding of culture and highlight the tektological foundations of culture. In this part, I analyze his organizational account of culture and interpret his tektological approach as a theory of the social dimensions of culture and the cultural dimensions of society. Second, I...
Tompsett, Fabian
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
This essay explores the diffractive relationship between Aleksandr Bogdanov and Otto Neurath. Using a diffractive methodology derived from Karen Barad, these two thinkers are brought into relationship through their impact upon the German Figurative Constructivists, a political-art movement which emerged from the Council Communist current grouped ar...
Oittinen, Vesa
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
Questions on the theory of cognition formed one of the focal points in the dispute between orthodox Russian Marxists and Aleksandr Bogdanov and his followers. Bogdanov was an adherent of Mach’s theory, which abandoned Kant’s concept of “things-in-themselves” (Ding an sich) outside the cognizing subject. According to Mach and Bogdanov, there is no n...
Bugaeva, Lyubov
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
In Empiriomonism, Aleksandr Bogdanov introduces the term ‘affectional’ that he borrowed from Richard Avenarius but revised in the light of William James’s theory of emotions. The ‘affectional’ is an index of energy balance between suffering and pleasure. Employing Bogdanov’s revised notions of affectional as an element of any organization or comple...
Rispoli, Giulia
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
This paper discusses the novelty of Aleksandr Bogdanov’s approach, which combines the systemic perspectives employed in his Tektology, the general science of organization (1913–1922). In this work, Bogdanov places particular emphasis on the concept of the environment and situates the process of ‘organization’ in a shared social context. The interac...
Steila, Daniela
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
While Lenin considered human knowledge to be similar to a mirror-like reflection of the object, Aleksandr Bogdanov emphasized the creative role of the subject in organizing the world. On the basis of some textual evidence, it is possible to describe the epistemologies of the two most influential Russian Marxists at the beginning of the twentieth ce...
Scherrer, Jutta
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
This paper analyses the historical genesis of Aleksandr Bogdanov’s conception of proletarian culture. In particular, the author deals with Bogdanov’s activity during his exile in Vologda, his organization of the Vpered group, and the debates over cultural politics amongst Russian Marxism in emigration. The systematic focus of the paper is on the co...
Chamier-Waite, Clea von
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
The formal, cinematic language specific to immersive motion pictures is an area of cinema theory that has been neglected up until now. This paper investigates a new language of cinematic montage specific to immersive cinema, somatic montage, while it examines historical precedents in the sciences, arts, and cinema of the twentieth century. We propo...
Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
The present paper reflects on the state of evolutionary approaches to culture, which are mostly seen as essential for defining ‘cultural science’. They manifest two flaws that still block a productive synthesis between the sciences and the humanities. First, they employ an inflationary generic concept of culture that covers all information that is ...
Dudley, Peter
Published in
Cultural Science Journal
If one accepts (following Poustilnik 1995 and 1998) that Aleksandr Bogdanov’s intention in using the term podbor over otbor aimed at defining the process by which the ‘system in its environment’ comes into and continues in existence, one is also constrained to accept that such systems are active agents in the definition of self. Systems that create...
