#16 - JRL 8206 - JRL Home
Date: Thu, 13 May 2004
From: Andrew Gentes <a.gentes@uq.edu.au>
Subject: Re: 8205-Rancour-Laferriere/ Masochism

I welcome Dr. Rancour-Laferriere's clarification of his statements regarding Russian masochism. The ambivalence towards it and with which he personally identifies is shared by myself as well. Distance and abstraction certainly help to make of masochism a kind of aesthetic beauty, similar to the way in which Nietzsche viewed (and lived) tragedy; and yet, when one is personally confronted by masochism and its effects, whether it's a figurative pain in the neck to a quite literal dire threat, then limiting oneself to a merely aesthetic appreciation becomes far more difficult.

Having said this, I think Dr. Rancour-Laferriere elides my riposte's central point concerning the origins of masochistic tendencies within Russian society. Again, I took away from reading his Slave Soul of Russia the impression that he views culture as the motherlode of these origins. As I see it (and as I thought Dr. Rancour-Laferriere did), Russian masochism, while perhaps reflecting a common human condition, is nonetheless made peculiar and excessive by its embeddedness in, and replication by, cultural memes (to wit: the many folk sayings that Dr. Rancour-Laferriere reproduces in his work). For my part, I see a specific masochistic tendency originating from such social and state institutions as the village commune and autocratic government. Many more examples could be given; but Dr. Rancour-Laferriere's recent JRL posting suggests his view is otherwise; that he sees this masochism as somehow having cardinal origins in the Russian psyche. This suggests to me a biological-determinist interpretation that singles out an entire ethnolinguistic nation-group, but one for which there is little evidence, from either Dr. Rancour-Laferriere or elsewhere.