Boris Groys

I was interested in a communist philosopher's take on post-communism. I hope this isn't the best attempt. Some gems:

'The struggle between these positions [marking left and right of party] determined the life of the country for a considerable period until the general line, represented by Stalin, won out at the beginning of the 1930s, whereupon left and right deviationists were liquidated over the course of the decade. '

'were liquidated', like a mattress you don't want.

'Thus Stalinist show more communism proves finally to be a revival of the Platonic dream of the kingdom of the philosphers, those who operate by means of language alone. In the Platonic state, the language of the philosophers is converted into direct violence by the class of guardians. This violence holds the state together. The Stalinist state was no different. It was the state apparatuses that translated the language of the philosopher into action - and, as is common knowledge, this translation was exceedingly brutal, incessantly brutal. Nevertheless, this remains a case of rule by language, for the sole means by which the philosopher could compel these apparatuses to listen to him and act in the name of the whole were those of language.'

I'm not sure who that passage shortchanges more, the Greeks, Chekists, or Gulag guards. We all cower to the middle of the night knock of a philosopher's language. Guffaw.

'On the one hand, sub-atomic particles are primary because all matter is made up of them. But in relation to finance they are secondary, because the greater the acceleration that releases the sub-atomic particles are discovered - and the size of the particle accelerator depends entirely upon its finance.'

Yes, the existence of quarks and muons in stars billions of miles away billions of years ago are completely dependent upon human government finance. Idiot. show less

The central thesis is that the titular "total art of Stalinism" continued and perhaps even made good on some of the prognostications and promises of the early Soviet avant-garde. This runs counter (a good thing) to the more popular narrative of Stalin's betrayal of the utopian promises of the constructivists, futurists, etc.

A theoretical book on the idea of 'new' in art is something that is ironically not very new anymore. Written in the early 1990s (like many books on this topic), the theories here have been surpassed but there is still value in some arguments on the idea of how value is applied to new artistic objects, unfortunately using tried-and-tested art examples like Cindy Sherman and Marcel Duchamps. The book does not rely on jargon, but the writing style is difficult at times; I enjoyed the structure show more and some of the arguments, but got little enjoyment from reading Groys' book. His recent papers on technology-led art are much more enjoyable and extremely interesting. show less

Thought-provoking read, even if it suffers from a mix of over-complex and pretentious passages where the author seems to have the right interpretation for everything.