Course «Discursive history of Russian nihilism: literature, philosophy, science»

The main idea of the seminar - historical discourse-analysis of the concept «nihilism» in russian literature of 1860-1910. The notion «nihilism» appeared in Russia in 1829. In the 1860's polemics this word has both negative and positive sense. Russian radical literature and social thought, the notions of «nihilism» and «terror/terrorism» are practically equated with each other. It is in the framework of the so called revolutionary «underground» that the idea of a special mission of several generations of the Russian «intelligentsia» evolved.