In their work and others’, we see something of a utopian/anti-utopian fascination with technology as an extension of the vital forces. And then there’s the phenomenon of technology … you can find interest in technology in Marx, in Nietzsche and Heidegger, in Ernst Jünger. Heidegger also said that humanism should be overcome. According to this logic, humankind is only one stage in the development of vital cosmic energies, and humanism should be overcome by something even more vital and more radical.
And, as you remember, Nietzsche said that Man-a human being-should be superseded by the Übermensch. The teleological, even eschatological understanding of history built a common ground for different Russian ways of thinking at that time.ĪW: What are the contexts and conditions in which the cosmists were working during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? What was the political and intellectual climate of the time? What platforms did they have to distribute their ideas?īG: At that time, Nietzsche’s influence was very strong in Russia. The latter faith holds that technology can be controlled and harnessed to a certain goal. Cosmism combines Christian faith in immortality and salvation with Marxist faith in technology. Marxism’s belief in technological progress is also teleological. The basic Christian idea is that history is not accidental, not spontaneous, but teleological. Russian cosmism at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries interested me as an attempt to, let’s say, secularize Christianity. So my imagination went in the opposite direction of my emigration. After emigrating I became more interested in Russian cultural traditions. I more or less knew Russian history-especially intellectual history-but I didn’t work with this knowledge. Were you exposed to the work of the cosmists during this time in the former Soviet Union? What was it that attracted you to their philosophical ideas?īoris Groys: In fact, during my Soviet time I was more interested in the West. Alice Wang: Do you recall your first encounter with Russian cosmism? I read that in the mid-1970s, you participated in apartment seminars on underground art in Leningrad and published articles in samizdat journals.
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