Open AccessTHE MODERNITY OF MANUAL REPRODUCTION: Soviet Propaganda and the Creative Life of Ideology
Author(s) -
LUEHRMANN SONJA
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
cultural anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.669
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1548-1360
pISSN - 0886-7356
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1360.2011.01103.x
Subject(s) - ideology , reproduction , dynamism , modernity , politics , agency (philosophy) , soviet union , counterintuitive , semiotics , sociology , aesthetics , political economy , mainstream , political science , social science , law , epistemology , art , ecology , philosophy , biology
In supposedly postideological times, late Soviet propaganda seems to epitomize the futile practices of a moribund regime. Instead, the material practices of ideological transmission in the 1960s and 1970s Soviet Union urge us to reconsider how ideas gain mobilizing force in a variety of political settings. This article looks at the use of handmade artifacts and personalized performances in Soviet cultural work to argue that personal reproduction is a crucial mediating factor between counterintuitive, utopian ideas and lived experience. As comparisons between the Soviet case and post‐Soviet movements show, semiotic slippages that take documented activity as evidence of broader social dynamism remain key to the sense of agency of mobilizing networks.