The term “economic self-management” stood at the center of economic and political debates in Soviet Estonia in 1987–1988. This article traces its transformation from an economic term to a political concept, reconstructing the intellectual resources that the reformers were drawing on in this process. Navigating the constraints of Soviet discourse, reform-minded academics in Soviet Estonia radically expanded the original meaning of isemajandamine, which ultimately provided an argumentative platform for declaring the republic’s “sovereignty” within the Soviet Union. The article brings out (...) the linguistic, political, and transnational dimensions of this conceptual innovation, which started in 1987 and was completed when the law on the “economic independence” of the Baltic republics was adopted by the Soviet Union in 1989. (shrink)

In his meticulously researched and conceptually innovative book, Zoltán Boldizsár Simon aims to capture the historical sensibility emergent during the postwar period broadly conceived, spanning from the 1940s to our present moment. Attending particularly to the debates concerning ecological and technological outlooks, Simon theorizes that our historical horizon is increasingly shaped by the expectations of an unprecedented event that challenges the sustainability of the human subject as known today. Arguing that the concept of unprecedented change can best be explained against (...) the backdrop of a modern processual temporal configuration originating in the eighteenth century, Simon likewise probes the same concept to illuminate a distinct relationship with the past. Elaborating on the main ideas of the book, the paper will interrogate critically Simon’s assertion whereby the novel postwar temporality is inherently dystopian, and will negotiate Simon’s engagement with presentism, which he questions as an inaccurate representation of our current regime of historicity. (shrink)

Artiklis käsitletakse nihilistliku kirjandusloome võimalusi eesti luule näitel. Nihilismi ei mõisteta artiklis väärtusprobleemina, vaid ontoloogilise probleemina. Nihilistlikku kirjandusloomet käsitletakse taotlusena tuua sõnasse teine, eimiski. Artikli teoreetiline raamistik toetub põhiliselt Gianni Vattimo languse ontoloogia kontseptsioonile, aga ka Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heideggeri ja Maurice Blanchot' töödele. Samuti analüüsitakse artikli teoreetilises osas eimiski väljendamise võimalusi eesti keeles, tuginedes Uku Masingu ning Jaan Kaplinski mõttekäikudele. Luuletajatest käsitletakse artiklis enim Jaan Oksa ja Juhan Liivi. Analüüsi käigus tuuakse esile järgmised eimiskiga seotud poeetilised figuurid: ootus (...) ja luhtumus, langus ja loojak, hullus, surm. Analüüsi tulemusena selgub, et nihilistlik loome on eesti luules tugevalt esindatud, kuid ei filosoofias ega luules pole võimalik saavutada otsest juurdepääsu eimiskile, tuleb piirduda aimamisega, vihjamisega. The paper discusses the possibilities for creating nihilistic literary works, using Estonian poetry as an example. The paper regards nihilism as an ontological problem, and not as a problem of values. Nihilistic literary creativity will be treated as an attempt to introduce nothingness. The theoretical framework is provided by Gianni Vattimo's ontology of decline, as well as by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Blanchot. The paper also analyzes, relying on the ideas put forward by Uku Masing and Jaan Kaplinski, the possibilities of expressing nothingness in the Estonian language. As to Estonian poets, the paper will focus on the works of Juhan Liiv and Jaan Oks. The analysis of their works highlights the following poetic figures related to nothingness: anticipation and failure, decay and decline, madness, death. The analysis will demonstrate that nihilism is strongly present in Estonian poetry. However, since neither philosophy nor poetry has direct access to nothingness, one must remain content with presentiments and allusions. (shrink)