"Toska" / тоска

www.rbth.com/lifestyle/332132-what-is-toska-russian-despair

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Dinesh ^club

. . . .can we locate a break or an interruption in the continuum of laboring and production? Platonov’s solution is ‘toska,’ a Russian word mobilized by him to designate the experience which occurs when

"the working process forms a blank space, a pause. It is literally the emptiness, a void, which is formed by a lack of labour. This emptiness produces a thought, whereas absolute fulness (preoccupation) wih labour does not leave a space for a pause or a gap for thinking . . . Platonov uses a specific Russian word, ‘toska,’ to describe this existential state or feeling of enslavement within poor life. . . ‘Toska’ is close to the English terms “melancholy” and “longing,” but it has no cause, object or direction."

The status of poor life is thus profoundly ambiguous: it is the lowest, constant struggle for survival, but it also functions on the verge of withdrawal from active life and as such opens up the space for breaking out of continuum of laboring and production -- in contrast to proletarian, nomadic Others don’t work, their despair cannot find solace in productive engagement. . . . Can it be that ‘toask’: is inside the whole world -- and there’s a five-year plan only in ourselves. ‘Toska is not just a human disposition, it permeates entire reality, it is present even in the inertia of abandoned fields. For this reason one should not focus too much on the emotional aspect of ‘toska’ (is it despair and melancholy? Etc): it is rather thinking at its zero level pure thought as the disconnection from the laborious life cycle. ~. . . Page 55

3 years ago. Edited 3 years ago.

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