Marxist Philosophy Research Articles

«BEAUTY» AS AN AESTHETIC CATEGORY AND VALUE IN THE RESEARCHES OF CAI YI

In the article, the author considers the philosophical theory of the famous Chinese scientist, philosopher, linguist Cai Yi about the category “beauty”. In his researches, Cai Yi put forward the theory that “beauty” is an objective reality, or a reflection in our subjective consciousness of this objective reality. In his reasoning’s about beauty, Cai Yi relies on the Marxist theory of values, for which was important to answer the question of the primacy of matter and spirit. The author focuses on the fact that Cai Yi, who took Marxist philosophy as a basis, put forward the theory that beauty, as an aesthetic category, characterizes phenomena from the point of view of perfection, so that, it has the highest aesthetic value.

Research on the Dominant and Implicit Integration Mechanism of Mental Health Education in Ideological and Political Education.

In order to improve the effectiveness, this article puts forward a research on the integration mechanism of explicit education and implicit education of psychological education in ideological and political education from the perspective of new media. Starting from the concept, characteristics, and types of new media, from the connotation, characteristics, theory, and practical significance of explicit education and recessive education, and from the perspective of new media, the integration mechanism of explicit education and recessive education in ideological and political education should be promoted. According to the integration principle of explicit education and implicit education in the new media perspective, this paper puts forward the integration strategy of explicit education and implicit education in the new media perspective. By using Marxist philosophy, instillation theory, and four learning theories, the paper uses the subjective sampling method to conduct a questionnaire survey on a university and puts forward some suggestions for the practical situation. The results show that the integration of explicit and implicit education into ideological and political education from the perspective of new media is effective and feasible, which can effectively improve the effectiveness of ideological and political education, promote the development of ideological and political education in university, and ensure the quality of ideological and political education in university.

Erratum

Erratum for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, “Searching for the Next Intifada: Exercises in Queer Muslim Futurism,” Meridians 20, no. 2 (2021): 443–65.Due to a publisher error, a quote on page 448 of this article was not properly credited. The passage should have read as follows:I extend this framework to capture various literary, visual, musical, cinematic, performative, theatrical, and other modes of expressive cultures aligned with social justice movements that at once critique differential distributions of power, resources, and life chances in the present and conjure what German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch once called the ‘anticipatory illumination of art’ that is necessary to envisage social life anew. (Kapadia 2019: 165–67)The passage has been corrected in the online versions of the article.https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-9547969

Silencing as a way to de-communise contemporary domestic social science

The idea is to consider the phenomenon of silencing as a way of decommunisation of modern Russian social science. The term «silencing» is absent in the methodological literature, so as a working definition is proposed to use the interpretation, which is given in the lexicographical dictionary S. I. Ozhegov, – as the implementation of aspirations, allowing by deliberate silence to hide, not to let know about something. The task is twofold: firstly, to present silence as a way to decommunicate the philosophical and methodological basis of modern domestic social science; second, to consider the use of this action on its subject-practical level. In the first case, it is proposed to demonstrate the fact that the silencing of the philosophy of Marxism as a methodology for studying social processes has had detrimental consequences, especially given the fact that this philosophy has been replaced by positivism (in the forms of postmodernism, poststructuralism, deconstructivism, etc.) which has 65 Знать, чтобы предвидеть... To Know so that to Foresee... long since become obsolete. Under the predominance of such «advanced» methodology, modern Russian social science and its branches have found themselves in a fundamental crisis. In fact, the attitude to cognition of deep cause-and-effect relations, correlation of essence and phenomena, necessity and contingency, possibility and reality and other is no longer obligatory. Methodological approaches that aspire to a non-subjective (objectivist) representation of reality have become dangerously popular. Secondly, by design, is to show that silencing has become a way of de-communising the subject-practical sides and levels of social science. In this connection, we should condemn the extremely poor use of information riches allowing to talk about the activity of the Communist Party of Belarus during the Great Patriotic War in various spheres of social life (in the educational process, in educational and propaganda work, in the training of scientific-pedagogical personnel). The exceptional importance of objective and full coverage of Communist Party history (the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and its part) for educating young people in the spirit of patriotism, for exposing the rewriting of history by Western proponents of de-communisation, for solving the urgent problems of preventing the reduction of Communist ideology, its withdrawal from it and thus strengthening the bourgeois (liberal, in the current terminology) ideology, should be emphasised.

Digging Walden’s Soil with Marxist Tools: A Study on Thoreau’s Walden

The nineteenth century saw industrialization become a significant force in the United State of America, just as in much of the developed world, and with these new developments, the so-called new Eden started to face the corruption of modern life. With mechanization came the speed-up associated with capitalist production, and alongside this speed-up came ideas of the corruption of society with the evils it bears: wealth and avarice, degradation of human values, and general indifference to nature and one's self. Some movements of the century, such as philosophical Transcendentalism and the Utopian Societies, can be understood as nascent reactions to this increasingly corrupted system. Henry David Thoreau, one of the most prominent writers of Transcendentalism, was also a very influential figure and critic in terms of social life and politics. He rebelled against institutions of every kind: church, state, social convention, inherited tradition, and indeed even eschewed society itself, turning his back on it to spend two years in the natural isolation of a wood-built cabin by Walden Pond. Like his contemporary, philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx, Thoreau believed that there was a connection between social justice and political economy. He was a daring fighter against particular modes of capitalism, religious organizations he saw as oppressive, and the coercive actions of an unfair state; he was also an ardent advocate for the abolition of slavery and for the emancipation of African Americans. This article argues that, to a great extent, even though Thoreau cannot be called a Marxist, Walden was an experiment in building an idealistic world in which with no class division, no religion, no ownership similar to a Marxist utopia in microcosm. Thus, Thoreau emerges as a revolutionist, and in his microcosm; Thoreau had no rules, no social division, or no private property. Much as, the language they use is quite different and Thoreau does not use Marxist terms, the similar themes they explore in their works cannot be underestimated. Hence, the aim, here, is to cultivate Walden's soil and unearth the connections between Marxist philosophy, in particular, The Communist Manifesto and Thoreau's Walden. While the paper considers Walden as a whole, the focus is primarily on the first chapter of the book, "Economy" and the ideas presented in this chapter are compared with those in the pithiest expression of Marx's political program The Communist Manifesto.

The Potentiality of Brown

The Potentiality of Brown Ariana Ruíz (bio) A Review of The Sense of Brown by José Esteban Muñoz. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. Pp. 224. $99.95 cloth, $25.95 paper. In Cruising Utopia (2009), José Esteban Muñoz proposes a strategy of critical hope that is actively practiced in response to a "here and now" that is not enough, especially for minoritarian subjects.1 Muñoz draws on this concept from the work on concrete utopia by Marxist philosopher Ernest Bloch to describe a type of hope that is indeterminate, anticipatory, and revolutionary. It is what Muñoz would later describe as "not announcing the way things ought to be, but, instead, imagining the way things could be."2 The practice and potentiality of critical hope (also referred to as "educated desire") underpins many of Muñoz's theoretical projects, including his final work, The Sense of Brown (2020). Published seven years after the untimely passing of the distinguished scholar of performance studies, queer theory, and Latinx studies, José Esteban Muñoz's The Sense of Brown delves into a theorization of "Brownness" and "Brown commons" that is driven by this type of utopian hope. That is, he explores a desire to know Brownness and what a Brown commons could be. While Muñoz does not explicitly engage Bloch here as fully as in Cruising Utopia, the two nevertheless continue to be linked in thought and theory. As the editors of The Sense of Brown, Joshua Chambers-Letson and Tavia Nyong'o tell us, the manuscript was produced concurrently [End Page 211] with Cruising Utopia. In fact, Muñoz had already started to develop and present on this project before the publication of his first book, Disidentifications (1999).3 With Muñoz's passing, Chambers-Letson and Nyong'o were tasked in finalizing a draft still in development that drew from about fifteen years of Muñoz's writing. Many of the chapters included in The Sense of Brown are revised and sometimes expanded versions of previously published journal articles and chapters in edited collections. And while the editors did not omit any of the chapters from Muñoz's draft and kept his initial sequence, they did add six chapters not originally included to help frame the narrative. The result is a manuscript made up of thirteen chapters organized in two parts. The first section of the book focuses on affect and Brown feelings, whereas the second section explores the concept of Brown commons. Given the strong connection among Muñoz's scholarship, those familiar with his earlier work will recognize many of the scholars he engages here, including (among others) Raymond Williams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Norma Alarcón, and Jean-Luc Nancy. This theoretical range—from performance studies and postcolonial theory to ethnic studies and continental philosophy—provides Muñoz the foundation from which to consider the relationship between affect and U.S. ethnoracialization of minoritarian subjects that runs throughout. Taken together with his earlier writing, what sets this project apart is the substantial attention to the field of Latinx studies by way of Brownness. The Brownness that Muñoz posits is of the present moment and, further, urges readers to not only recognize but also act on its utopian possibilities. The question then is, what is Brownness? Indeed, Brown takes many forms in Muñoz's analysis by way of Brownness, Brown feelings, sense of Brown, Brown commons, and Brown worldings. Each of the proposed variations work to describe a sense of belonging among subjects deemed at odds with normative national affect. In other words, building from the work of May Joseph, Muñoz maintains that the United States has established unofficial affective norms that are impressed in everyday performances of (White) citizenship. The failure of subjects to correctly perform these standards marks them as Brown. This is perhaps best illustrated and complicated in the fifth chapter of Muñoz's monograph titled, "'Chico, What Does It Feel Like to Be a Problem?' The Transmission of Brownness." The question, derived from W. E. B. Du Bois, addresses the way subjects can affectively recognize they are seen as problematic. Muñoz...

The life-nerve of the dialectic: György Lukács and the metabolism of space and nature

One hundred years that shook the world. This is one way of receiving History and Class Consciousness by György Lukács, a text that is considered by many to be one of the most important in Marxist philosophy and dialectics since its first appearance in 1923. However, in approaching its centenary, how does the focus on dialectics that is at the text’s centre travel to address contemporary interdisciplinary concerns in political economy and radical geography? This article delivers a fresh reading of dialectics in and beyond History and Class Consciousness to distil the relevance of Lukács for contemporary political economists and radical geographers that, it is argued, necessarily lies in engaging with his method and understanding of totality. The focus dwells on totality and the ‘life-nerve’ of the dialectic, referring to the process of interiorising theory and practice in constituting a relational approach to analysing the metabolism of socio-nature. By so doing, the possibilities and limits of both totality and dialectics are revealed to political economists and radical geographers interested in furthering the case for methodological relationalism in their conceptions of the production of space and socio-nature.

Research on Issues and Vision of Chinese Marxist Philosophy

Marxist philosophy has a significant role in China's construction and development as the economy and society develop. As a result of national conditions, Marxist philosophy has flourished on the soil of China. This has resulted in Chinese experts and researchers in this field conducting in-depth analyses, thinking about this research topic, and publishing rich and advanced research results. These results demonstrate that Chinese scholars are continuously exploring the development and application of Marxist philosophy in China. In spite of this, many issues have been encountered when adapting Marxist philosophy to the Chinese context, such as a vague academic orientation, a narrow research field of vision, and a single research method. Therefore, starting from the two major issues of Chinese Marxist philosophy, this paper analyzes the certainty and uncertainty, analyses the theory and practice, and then identifies the most effective method for promoting the deep root and innovative development of Marxist philosophy in China. Thus, it is necessary to gain a scientific understanding of Marxist philosophy and China's national conditions, grasp the central theme of the development of the times, and search for truth from facts to implement Marxist philosophy on Chinese soil.

An Analysis of Public Environment-Oriented Marxist Philosophy Content Dissemination.

Marxist philosophy has always been attached to the practice. In the new age, Marxist philosophy needs to solve many problems, such as ecological destruction, environmental pollution, international conflicts, and technical innovation, and improve the integration of the Marxist philosophy system with China's national conditions. The premise of change is practice, and the premise of practice is dissemination. Promoting the dissemination of Marxist philosophy is the cornerstone of solving the blind spot in the process of Marxist philosophy popularization. Because of the development of Internet technology, in order to ensure the validity of the uploaded videos related to Marxist philosophy on the platform, combining the research on human visual perception and the advantages of the long-term recurrent convolutional network (LRCN) model in video content recognition, an attention mechanism-based LRCN model is proposed, which simulates the attention characteristics of the human brain in the deep learning model, considers the video content globally, and makes the attention of the model fall in the effective area of the whole video. The experiment uses HMDB51, UCF101, and YouTube-8M data sets, and the results show that the LRCN model based on the attention mechanism proposed in this paper can effectively improve the accuracy of video content recognition, and it can converge quickly during training to improve the efficiency of model training.

Analysis of the Relevance Environment between Marxist Philosophy and System Theory Based on Deep Learning.

In social science and natural science, MP (Marxist Philosophy) has played an active role in promoting its development, and MP also guides people's practice and understanding. There is an inevitable connection with system theory MP. In a sense, both system theory and PMbelong to methodology and both contain the viewpoints of movement and development. In this paper, various text features in natural scenes are discussed in detail, and the original vector is studied by using CNN (Convective Neural Network) of DL (Deep Learning), so as to construct a one-dimensional text vector and realize the mutual influence and continuous optimization of feature extraction and text clustering. The experimental results show that under the condition of calculating the current cosine similarity measure, the accuracy rate is the highest, reaching 93.67%. This algorithm can effectively improve its performance in text classification tasks on large data sets.

Materialism dialectic și istoric în comunismul românesc (II)

The article (published in 2 parts) analyzes the expression and development of Marxist philosophy in communist Romania, as seen in the evolution of the official handbooks and courses of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Its first part looked at the original Marxian foundations (Marx and Engels’ views on metaphilosophy and their actual philosophical practice), the Soviet mediations (the institutional and conceptual reconfigurations of Soviet Marxist philosophy until the death of Stalin) and the initial local Romanian configuration, as seen in the first two editions of the handbooks, published in the early 1950s and early 1960s respectively. The second part of the article follows this evolution further, up to 1989, and concludes by formulating a series of observations on the uses and abuses of Marxist philosophy in communist Romania.

Marxism, Psychology, and the Soviet Mind

Marxism, Psychology, and the Soviet Mind Garret J. McDonald (bio) Hannah Proctor, Psychologies in Revolution: Alexander Luria's "Romantic Science" and Soviet Social History. 268 pp. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. ISBN-13 978-3030350307. 59.99. Wladimir Velminski, Homo Sovieticus: Brain Waves, Mind Control, and Telepathic Destiny, trans. Erik Butler. 128 pp. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. ISBN-13 978-0262035699. $19.95. Anton Yasnitsky, ed., A History of Marxist Psychology: The Golden Age of Soviet Science. 218 pp. New York: Routledge, 2020. ISBN-13 978-0367340063. $46.95. Nearly four decades have passed since the publication of the Russian psychologist Alex Kozulin's call-to-arms, Psychology in Utopia (1984), which presents six case studies of famous Russian and Soviet psychologists in an effort to contextualize the development of Soviet psychology within Soviet social history. Kozulin examines the interactions among Marxist philosophy, the science of psychology, and social history, challenging other scholars to expand upon his work. While the text does not advance any overarching conclusions per se, Kozulin aimed for the book to represent "a socially informed study of Soviet psychology that [distinguishes] between the actual conditions of its development and those secondary interpretations that are invented in order to present these conditions in an ideologically coherent form."1 Designed to challenge both Soviet and Western scholars, who had long conceptualized psychology as either merely a single component of a broader history of Soviet science or as a theoretical issue entirely excluding historical analysis, [End Page 145] Psychology in Utopia opened the doors to thoughtful historical analyses of Soviet psychology. Five years later, the historian of Soviet science David Joravsky's seminal text, Russian Psychology (1989), provided the definitive response, one that continues to dominate the English-language historiography.2 Sweeping in scope and ambition, Russian Psychology examines the entirety of the development of the Russian "sciences of the mind" (namely psychology, psychiatry, physiology, and psychoanalysis) from the mid-19th century to the 1970s. The world contemporary to Kozulin and Joravsky—littered for years with consistent accusations by Soviet dissidents and Western media that Soviet psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience had been coopted by the regime to enforce party ideology and repress dissenting voices (a notion only recently reexamined in the academic literature)—was ripe for these publications, which stood well above any of their Cold War era counterparts due to their meticulous research, intricate analyses of the inner mechanisms of Soviet psychological practices, and earnest consideration of the influence of Marxist philosophy and society at large in scientific developments.3 For almost a decade after the Soviet collapse and subsequent "archival revolution" of the 1990s, Joravsky's scholarship remained the sole go-to text on Soviet psychology. In fact, during this period Western interest in the Russian sciences of the mind seemed to wane altogether, with the exception of Daniel Todes's notable exploration of the laboratory practices and research of Ivan Pavlov and a few disjointed studies concerned with the legacy of Freud and [End Page 146] psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union.4 As academic interests in the field grew once again in the first decade of the 21st century, none challenged Joravsky's monumental text directly. Scholars instead carved out niches within which to explore individual scientists or specific social and political issues, such as criminality, homosexuality, and governance.5 This has remained the case until quite recently, as a few brave scholars seek to build a broad consensus concerning the precise development, forms, and functions of a distinctively "Marxist" psychology and take sincerely, yet critically, the ideas born of the marriage between the socio-economic philosophy of Marxism and the sciences of the mind. Psychology and Revolution Hannah Proctor's monograph Psychologies in Revolution represents an ideal starting point as a bridge between the traditional biographical approach and Kozulin's call for a broader social history of psychology. The text is, at least in part, a biography of the Russian neuropsychologist Aleksandr Romanovich Luriia (1902–77), built upon Joravsky and more recent literature concerned with Luriia's collaborator, Lev Semenovich Vygotskii (1896–1934).6 The book is, however, much more than a conventional biography. Luriia—whose life and work spanned the experimental psychology of...

The Reform and Development of Practice View Based on Philosophical History View

The practical point of view is a primary and basic point of view in Marxist philosophy. Practical philosophy has run a long course in the history of philosophy. Since Aristotle initiated Western practical philosophy, two opposing traditions of practical philosophy have been formed, namely, the moral practice theory and the technical practice theory. Although it has been sublated and developed by such philosophers as Kant, Hegel, and Feuerbach, it has always been with certain defects such as abstraction, one-sidedness, and metaphysics. On the basis of critically inheriting the reasonable connotation of practice concepts in traditional philosophy, in Marx’s practice view, he took labor as the core, understood the nature and living conditions of humans through labor, and established the relationship between humans and the world through practice. It resolved the traditional subject-object opposition and the opposition of thinking and existence. It has surpassed predecessors' practical philosophy in four aspects: question orientation, existence field, thinking mode and value purport, thus completing a fundamental change in the history of philosophy.

Perception of György Lukács’s Marxism in China: from ideological criticism to the formation of a scientific approach

The article examines the history and current state of studies on the ideas of the Hungarian Marxist philosopher György Lukács by the leading Chinese scholarship. It is based on many examples of the most characteristic scientific articles and monographs. The Chinese researchers of Lukács’s philosophy went through a difficult path – from the translation of individual essays to the large-scale translation and study of his fundamental works, as well as from political criticism of partisanship to the practical and theoretical interpretation of his ideas. First of all, it is shown that in the 1950s and 1990s, G. Lukács’s philosophy was involved in political discussions in the PRC, and that the Chinese studies of the Hungarian Marxist essentially repeated the Soviet criticism. At the end of the 1970s and 1980s, the related discussions on Lukács’s ideological affiliation were intensified among the Chinese philosophers (Xu Chongwen, Du Zhangzhi, Zhang Yixing, Sun Bokui). The key focus of the paper is on the main courses of the study of G. Lukács’s philosophy in the works of Chinese philosophers in the 1990s–2000s. There are following examples of such researches with main subject and scholars’ names: regarding the theory of reification (Xu Chongwen, Zhang Xiping, Sun Quansheng, Niu Hongmei, Ye Yanjun, Liang Hui, Li Qingjun, Hu Xuming, Han Qiuhong, Du Zhangzhi); ideas of totality (Xu Chongwen, Yang Wushuan, Zhang Kangzhi, Du Zhangzhi, Jiang Bin); the idea of totality (Xu Chongwen, Yang Wushuan, Zhang Kangzhi, Du Zhangzhi, Jiang Bin); class consciousness (Zhang Yibing, Luo Siliang); orthodox Marxism (You Hao, Li Rong); the book “History and Class Consciousness” (Du Zhangzhi, Sun Bokui, Gu Yisi, Zhang Liang, Zhang Kangzhi, Gao Min); comparative analysis (Pang Yiping, Han Lixin, Luo Siliang). Finally, the article describes and evaluates the study of Lukacs’s philosophy in China. It is shown that the Chinese scientific studies of G. Lukacs have become more specialized and focused on specific problems, and there has been a gradual departure from the traditional conception of Lukacs as a strictly Marxist philosopher. At the same time, it is noted that until today, the Chinese philosophers are significantly behind their Western colleagues in the studying of Lukacs’ ideas, and this primarily concerns the necessary diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches.

Charles W. Mills

Here I both celebrate and critique the legacy of Charles W. Mills. I begin by offering some reflections on the trajectory of Mills’s career and intellectual development, focusing on his move from Marxist philosophy to the philosophy of race. I then attempt to undermine an argument in Mills’s final book, for why those interested in emancipation should choose liberalism over Marxism. By contrasting Mills with the late Italian Marxist philosopher of history Domenico Losurdo, with whom Mills shared a blistering critique of ‘racial’ liberalism but whom I claim Mills misread, I seek to weaken key premises in Mills’s argument.

Philosophical Freethinking in the USSR (Cases of Evald Ilyenkov and Merab Mamardashvili)

The article deals with the phenomenon of philosophical freethinking in the USSR. It is shown that the emergence of freethinking was the result of many years of ideological and political control over philosophical discourse from the early 1930s to the early 1950s. For the generation that chose philosophy as their profession in the 1950s, the main manifestation of freethinking was the creative appeal to the philosophical heritage of Karl Marx, accompanied by attempts to separate the “genuine Marx” from other classics of the Marxist-Leninist philosophical doctrine and to find in Marx’s philosophy the key to understanding modern problems. A remarkable case of philosophical freethinking in the 1950—1970s was the romantic Marxism of Evald Ilyenkov, who was characterized by the desire to protect communist ideals and preserve Marxist dialectics in the face of the threat of the spreading influence of Western philosophy. Another example of freethinking was the philosophical work of Merab Mamardashvili. He began with the development of a Marxist philosophy of consciousness, thanks to which he managed to achieve professional recognition and intellectual independence, but later moved away from the philosophy of Marx and turned to understanding the work of other Western thinkers. The thinking of Descartes, Kant, and Proust for him symbolized a different philosophical homeland and ideals, which in the 1980s he was opposed to Soviet reality and Russian culture.

Marxist View of Nature and Its Contemporary Value

Marxist view of nature is an important part of Marxist philosophy, and its connotation can be summed up into five parts: The first is the opposition and unity of man and nature; the second is the unity of natural and social productive forces; the third is the material transformation of man and nature; the fourth is the root cause of the ecological and environmental problems in capitalist society; the fifth is the solution to the ecological and environmental problems in capitalist society. The Marxist view of nature is still of great significance to the development of today's society, so it is particularly important to examine the multidimensional view of Marxist view of nature and explore its contemporary value.

马克思主义哲学视域下大数据技术探究

马克思主义哲学视域下大数据技术探究

Pregnant Materialist Natural Law: Bloch and Spartacus’s Priestess of Dionysus

In this article, I explore two neglected works by the twentieth-century Jewish German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left and Natural Law and Human Dignity. Drawing on previous analyses of leftist Aristotelians and natural law, I blend Bloch’s two texts’ concepts of pregnant matter and maternal law into “pregnant materialist natural law.” More precisely, Aristotelian Left articulates a concept of matter as a dynamic, impersonal agential force, ever pregnant with possible forms delivered by artist-midwives, building Bloch’s messianic utopia. And Natural Law resurrects the Stoics’ concept of natural law as drawing on a prehistoric matriarchal utopia, later channeled by earth goddess cults misconstrued by the nineteenth-century German anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen as political matriarchy. I then conclude by linking this pregnant materialist natural law to Dionysus as son of the Great Mother Goddess. Though stigmatized throughout homophobic Western history for his queerness and maternal dependence, Dionysus is also the patron god of Bloch’s hero, the slave revolutionary Spartacus, paramour of a priestess of Dionysus who prophesied his divine mission of liberation.

Dialogical Functions of You-Narration in Auto/Biography: Anne Harich’s “Wenn ich das gewußt hätte…”: Erinnerungen an Wolfgang Harich (2007)

Ever since the 1970s, if not before, second-person narration has been used as an alternative storytelling format in auto/biography to expand the narrative possibilities of engaging with one’s own or someone else’s life. The second-person pronoun can support the author’s project of self-exploration while also offering a means for self-distancing. When someone else’s story is addressed to that person, this raises questions concerning the epistemics of the narrated events as well as the teller’s storytelling rights and authority. This article explores the use of you-narration in an auto/biographical text by Anne Har­ich about her dead husband, Marxist philosopher Wolfgang Harich. The second-person nar­rative form is shown to serve various functions, ranging from creating an imaginary dialogue with the dead to expressing the author’s personal feelings about and perspectives on the life she lived with her husband. The analysis shows how Anne Harich, in imagining a conversa­tion with her husband, vents her own pent-up frustration and points to her ambivalent at­titude towards her marriage. The you-narrative parts fictionalize the otherwise non-fictional account and show that one needs to distinguish between the aspects of address at the level of the communication between narrator and narratee and reference in the story world of the you-narration.