Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating; vigorous and ailing; bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive; in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation. Focusing on the major transformation of the 1950s at the level of discourse; ideology; language; and ritual; Alexei Yurchak traces the emergence of multiple unanticipated meanings; communities; relations; ideals; and pursuits that this transformation subsequently enabled. His historical; anthropological; and linguistic analysis draws on rich ethnographic material from Late Socialism and the post-Soviet period. The model of Soviet socialism that emerges provides an alternative to binary accounts that describe that system as a dichotomy of official culture and unofficial culture; the state and the people; public self and private self; truth and lie--and ignore the crucial fact that; for many Soviet citizens; the fundamental values; ideals; and realities of socialism were genuinely important; although they routinely transgressed and reinterpreted the norms and rules of the socialist state.
#1656782 in Books 2000-04-17 2000-04-17Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.10 x .60 x 6.10l; .75 #File Name: 0691050252248 pages
Review
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Manent's City of ManBy K. KuehlPretty dense philosophical reading; but if you have the endurance to get through it; Manent is very insightful. He really does great job challenging the tenants of modernity; but leaves us questioning what can take their place.44 of 46 people found the following review helpful. Amendment to the previous reviewBy A CustomerThe first .com review here offered by a reader from Dallas; Texas; strikes me as slightly misleading. "Good fascists;" Christian monks; and heroic military invention make no appearance in Pierre Manent's THE CITY OF MAN. They are; rather; that particular reader's context for understanding what Manent is writing about: namely; Montesquieu and the career of liberal political theory and its social-scientific offspring in the past several centuries.Manent's project is to try to understand "modern man." But to do so confronts us immediately with a riddle. To understand modern man; we would seem first to need to understand man's NATURE; but then; if man has a nature; HISTORY should not matter; and there could be no deep difference between modern man and ancient man. Yet we intuitively know that there is a very real modern "difference." "Modern man" seems to be both a natural being and an historical being. How can we understand this paradox?In pursuing this question with formidable dialectical subtlety; Manent has opened genuinely new ground in political philosophy -- or at least retrieved a possibility which has been eclipsed for several centuries. Manent has learned much from Leo Strauss; and it is perhaps readers of Strauss who will find this book most extraordinary. For Manent in effect takes issue with a central tenet of Strauss's political philosophy: the alternatives we face are NOT exhausted by those offered by "ancients" and "moderns." For such a structuring of the history of political philosophy fails to do justice to what is unique in Christianity.Manent's singular contribution; then; is to recover the genuinely philosophical implications of Grace.6 of 8 people found the following review helpful. City of Man = AmericaBy Austin ChristopherManent has produced a work of genius. And America is the place he describes: where man can be "free" without any conception of what he really is or what he is for; and thus without any conception what freedom really is.
