Prey to the intricate syllogisms of reason, we tend to overlook one of the essential privileges of philosophical speculation: summoning delirium. If philosophy has so much to say, it is precisely because it tries on everything that resists being thought, be it extravagant, ecumenical, unsuspected, counterfactual, idle, stupid, unnatural, inert, gratuitous, sublime, profuse, complex, impossible. or antimoral. Conditions that Russian cosmism more than met, a unique movement at the dawn of the 20th century that literally advocated the resurrection of the dead through technological means as a condition of possibility to bring to fruition the revolutionary efforts emanating from the Revolution October; or to put it in the words of Alexander Svyatogor, author of the Biocosmist Manifesto, “we are concerned with the immorality of the individual in the totality of spiritual and physical forces. The resurrection of the Dead is the recomposition of all those who have gone to the grave. With this, in no way will we fall into the Trash of religion or mysticism. We are too sober, and we declare war on religion and mysticism." The anthology prepared and prefaced by Boris Groys is an invaluable document for many reasons, not the least of which allows a lucid approach to some avant-garde eccentrics – Nikolai Fyodorov was the first to seriously consider resurrecting the dead by scientific means, just as Alexander Bogdanov tried the possibility of rejuvenation through blood transfusion while Konstantín Tsiolkovsky is considered the father of cosmonautics for his austronautical designs and equations on rockets – whose concerns are directly related to the concerns of modern-day transhumanism, artificial intelligence, interplanetary consciousness and even interspecies dialogue (with the possibility of complex interaction with non-organic entities). Originally published in 2018 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the careful translation into Spanish by Fulvio Franchi has a prologue by Martín Baña and Alejandro Galliano.
It is with immortal pleasure that this interview was conducted.
—Close to an exercise in fantastic projection –when using the word fantasy I use it in the sense of dream visualization– the question that borders an anthology like yours is the question of immortality, that is, those questions that condition the very existence of philosophy. What kind of philosophical aspect embodies the Russian cosmism and why do you think it is, at present, so seductive as it is extravagant?
—Well, the concept –and hope– of immortality was traditionally related to the spirit, God, the soul, reason, ideas, etc. But at least since the middle of the 19th century, men came to the conclusion that they are not spirits, but living bodies: bodies of work (Marx), vital bodies (Nietzsche) or desiring bodies (Freud). From Nietzsche to Deleuze, Western thought confronts us with the celebration of life. It is the impersonal, anonymous and immortal life that connects us not with God or Reason but with plants, animals and the entire material Universe. We can accept that, but what about our personal lives? In response to this question we only hear that dying is our ecological duty. When we die, we make room for further growth of life. Now Russian cosmism is interested precisely in the individual human body and its place in the cosmos. So the Russian cosmism coincides with the mainstream of modern thought, but puts a different, more individualistic spin on it.
—Born as an iron will to emancipate the species from the limitations of nature, the echoes of cosmism beat strongly in the transhumanism of our days, when scientific research on aging is experiencing a moment of splendor (I am thinking of the case of gene editing and cell reprogramming, as well as in "antiaging" clinics and large projects led by Silicon Valley, where the case of Calico, a Google company, dedicates a million-dollar annual budget not only to delaying aging, but also to to consider it as a disease that, given the case, should and can be eradicated). What do you think about it?
—This development is an inescapable consequence of modern medicine understanding itself as a fight against death. Nowadays, if someone dies, the newspapers usually write: he lost the fight against disease and death. But this formulation implies that this battle could also be won. In any case, the limit of this battle remains unclear. And that means one can fight aging and death for as long as it takes.
—“All human beings who ever lived must rise from the dead as works of art and be put in museums for preservation”; This complex phrase of his prologue takes on a special preponderance when read from a culture such as Mexico, where the dialogue with those who have died is considered as a permanent updating from the altars of the Day of the Dead –a signature heterotopia where there are– a series of baroque installations halfway between the offering, the site specific and the portal to continue in communication with the absent, entertaining with the terrestrial fruits, the memory and the spirit of those who are no longer there. What do you think of popular vitalist practices like the one referred to in relation to Russian cosmism?
—The Day of the Dead is about spirits, while Russian cosmism is about bodies. That is the basic difference. In effect, however, the popularity of vampires, zombies, and other undead in our contemporary mass culture shows the interest in the afterlife that is so characteristic of modern post-Christian culture, rather than the interest in the afterlife. life of the soul
—Few authors like Elías Canetti made the denial against death a standard, an obsession and a reason for such recurring philosophical anguish, at least as a macerated anguish that drinks from both literature and philosophy. What does the following aphorism of the Bulgarian writer tell you? “You start by counting the dead. Each one should, by the fact of having died, be unique like God. One death and one more are not two deaths. Before the living should be counted, and how pernicious these sums already are!
—Indeed, Russian cosmism was moved not so much by the desire of its protagonists to live forever, but rather by the desire to save others, including previous generations, from death. It has already been said that only the others die. Russian cosmism is actually about others: the current generation and previous generations.
—In a 2017 conference entitled Optimists of the Future Past Perfect (available on YouTube), artist Arseny Zhilyaev said the following regarding the possibility of Russian cosmism fulfilling the promise of infinity that capitalism deceives: “Cosmism was born almost at the same time as the Marxist project. Both doctrines have a lot in common in their intentions towards humanity and in relation to objects. But it is also possible to compare Marxism and Cosmism as two examples of anti-philosophy, which seek above all not to build an integrated intellectual system, but rather to organize the practical aspects of life by engaging in the intellectual clarification of the current state of affairs. of the life". What do you think about it?
—Yes, I agree that Marxism and Cosmism are similar. Both are less the attempts to interpret the world as a project to transform it. And both take a different position towards religion than the classical Enlightenment. Marxism sees in religion not an error or a superstition, but an expression of the genuine human desire for a better future. For Marxism, defeating religion means realizing through social and technological means the project that Christians believed could be accomplished only by divine grace. But Marxism, of course, was still Hegelian. And Hegel proclaimed the famous death to the Absolute Master: he proclaimed that the revolution against death was impossible. Russian cosmism is a post-Hegelian revolution project directed against death as the Absolute Master.
—It is still overwhelming that cosmism, unlike other disruptive currents, wanted less to destroy the past and rather to exhume it, giving a new life to the dead, which undoubtedly connects with the forensic aesthetics of our days : zombie apocalypse and polysexual vampires imbued in necrocapitalist realities mediated by territorial war conflicts, going through mineral and digital extractivism, as well as the place of the disappeared of so many Latin American dictatorships is –impossible not to remember the phrase of the dictator Rafael Videla: “ the disappeared is unknown, it has no entity... He is neither dead nor alive, he is disappeared”– as well as in places co-governed by organized crime and drug trafficking, giving rise to infernal beasts such as femicide machines (González Rodríguez), necromachines (Reguillo) or gore capitalisms (Valencia). What is your opinion?
—Yes, of course, that is the main impulse of cosmism. It is a reaction against the flow of life and technological progress that permanently replaces the old with the new, the past with the present and the present with the future. And yes, to this process of repression of the dead is added the politics of oblivion, the sending of the dead to Nothingness. That is why for Nikolai Fedorov, the founder of cosmist thought, art, and especially the art museum, were so important. He saw in the museum a space for anti-technology and, if you like, anti-politics: technology and politics aimed at rescuing the past, technology that resists the passage of time and oblivion.
—What remains of cosmism in present-day Russia? Do you consider Putin's government more of a dystopia or a refined kakistocracy?
—In today's Russia there is a growing interest in cosmism. The writings of cosmist authors are being published, many of them for the first time. There are scientific institutes and initiatives dedicated to the study of cosmism. Cosmism had a strong influence on Russian/Soviet art, especially poetry and visual arts. Now, some of the major museums and art exhibition spaces organize art exhibitions that reflect this influence.
—If by some strange spell—say, a Haitian voodoo rite—you could bring Karl Marx back to life, would you? Or would you rather bring Lenin's embalmed body back to life? What do you think they would have thought of these mendacious times of ours poisoned by a transhumanist passion? And above all, what do you think?
—Actually, Russian cosmism was interested not so much in the resurrection of the famous, but rather in the resurrection of ordinary people who were forgotten by history: immortality for the masses. The relationship of Russian cosmism with contemporary transhumanism? It depends on how you define transhumanism. If we refer to cyborgs and other similar forms of combination between man and machine, then we have here a new version of pre-Christian polytheism in which machines replace animals. Previously, demigods were imagined as combinations between human and animal bodies, now Supermen are imagined as combinations between human body and different technical devices, just like we see in Hollywood movies. In this sense the Cosmists were humanists. The resurrection of the human body did not mean its fusion with the machine.
Immortality for all!
Boris Groys*
Russian cosmism does not present itself as an integral philosophy. Rather, it is about a circle of authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries for whom the visible cosmos was the only place for human life after the failure of historic Christianity with its faith in the reality of the afterlife, The world beyond. From this discovery, or rather from this loss, different conclusions could be drawn. One of the conclusions disseminated at that time was the denial of the idea of individual immortality and the fate of the world in general: human beings were proposed to limit themselves to the temporal borders of their finite terrestrial life and the circle of concerns linked to that life. Russian cosmism theorists came to the opposite conclusion to the “death of God”. They called on humanity to establish total power over the cosmos and to ensure individual immortality for all human beings who live and have lived before. The means of realizing this aspiration should be a centralized universal state: Russian cosmism was not just a theoretical discourse, but a political program. Michel Foucault has a well-known phrase that defines the principle of the functioning of the modern State, in contrast to the functioning of the sovereign State of the traditional type. The principle of the traditional State "Let live and die", in the modern State it would be "Make live and let die". The modern State is concerned with the problems of birth, health and safety of the vital activity of the population. In this way, according to Foucault, the modern State functions, first of all, as a "biopower": the justification for its existence lies in the fact that it guarantees the survival of the human mass, of the human being as a biological species. However, if the objective of the State is the survival of the population, the "natural" death of an isolated individual is passively accepted by the State as an inevitable fact. In other words, natural death functions as the natural limit of the State as biopower. The modern State accepts this limit while respecting the private sphere of natural death. By the way, not even Foucault questions that limit. But what would happen if a biopower decided to radicalize its program and reformulate its motto as "Make live and not let die"? In other words, if he decided to fight against "natural" death. It can be assumed that a decision of this type would seem utopian. But precisely this demand for absolute biopower was formulated by many Russian thinkers before and after the October Revolution.
*Excerpt from the prologue of Cosmismo ruso (Caja Negra Editora, 2021).
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