Gastvortrag von Prof. Galin Tihanov

Am Dientag, 19. April hat Galin Tihanov, Professor an der University of Manchester, am Slavischen Seminar zum Thema "FRAMING SEMANTIC PALEONTOLOGY: THE 1930s AND BEYOND" gesprochen.

Inhalt: The exponents of semantic paleontology, a trend marked by the significant impact of Nikolai Marr’s “new theory of language”, came of age as scholars and thinkers in the course of the 1920s and produced their most significant work in the 1930s; by that time Marr (who in 1930 was accorded the honour of addressing the 16th Party Congress) had reached the apogee of his public influence. In this paper – the first systematic examination of semantic paleontology and its place in the landscape of Soviet humanities – I discuss the work of the School’s three major representatives: Marr, Olga Freidenberg, and Frank-Kamenetskii. I trace their polemics with Russian Formalism and vulgar sociologism, as well as their strained relationship with orthodox Marxism, and ask the question of their influence on contemporary and later literary and cultural theory.