Issue 26

The Issue 26 Collective 

Main Collective: Emma Amos, Zehra F. Arat, Julie A. Christensen, Susan Spencer Crowe, Mila Dau, Tennessee Rice Dixon, Barbara Duarte, Esgalhado, Carole Gregory, Kellie Henry, Laura Hoptman, Avis Lang, Evelyn Leong, Loretta Lorance, Lu Xiujuan, Judy Molland, Joey Morgan, Michele Morgan,  Vernita Nemec, Ann Pasternak, Sara Pasti, Tavia Portt, Martha Townsend

Associates: Ida Applebroog, Patsy Beckert, Joan Braderman, Gail Bradney, Kathie Brown, Cynthia Carr, Josely Carvalho, Lenora Champagne, Chris Costan, Mary Beth Edelson, Su Friedrich, Janet Froelich, C. Palmer Fuller, Michele Godwin, Pennelope Goodfriend, Vanalyne Green, Kathy Grove, Harmony Hammond, Sue Heinemann, Elizabeth Hess, Lyn Hughes, Joyce Kozloff, Arlene Ladden, Ellen Lanyon, Nicky Lindeman, Lucy R. Lippard, Melissa Meyer, Robin Michals, Sabra Moore, Linda Peer, Marty Pottenger, Carrie Rickey, Elizabeth Sacre, Miriam Schapiro, Amy Sillman, Joan Snyder, Elke M. Solomon, Pat Steir, May Stevens, Michelle Stuart, Susan Torre, Cecilia Vicuna, Elizabeth Weatherford, Sally Webster, Faith Wilding, Nina Yankowitz, Holly Zox

Advisors: Vivian E. Browne, Ada Ciniglio, Elain Lustig Cohen, Eleanor Munro, Linda Nochlin, Barbara Quinn, Jane Rubin, Ann Sperry, Rose Weil

From the Issue 26 Collective

From the Russian Editors of IdiomA

The end of the colonial era has led to paradigmatic shifts in the humanities and social sciences, making postcolonial discourse a major theoretical influence. Today the collapse of many so-called totalitarian regimes calls for a similar reorientation. IdiomA aims to contribute to and challenge methods of cultural analysis including feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, discourse analysis, and others — while explicitly taking into consideration the phenomenon of totalitarian societies.

IdiomA has both an international and a cross-disciplinary perspective, following the conviction that contributions from sociology, political science, anthropology, and linguistics can greatly benefit cultural theory. At the same time, we believe that theorizations of culture are to be found not just in scholarly writings but also in artistic practice.

We further believe that the histories of both democratic and totalitarian societies are part of the modern project. The problematics of cultural theory in the West are largely determined by "forgetting" the cultural forms that modemity assumed in other societies, such as the ex-Soviet bloc countries. IdiomA will foster interdisciplinary and international dialogues by aiming to reformulate such issues as culture and power, the functioning of ideology, political systems and gender, and strategies of resistance, and by juxtaposing and comparing the cultura mechanisms at work in Eastern and Western societies.

Recent political changes in Eastem Europe made public for the first time the discussions and investigations of “totalitarian structures in these countries. This easing of censorship, together with improved access to Western sources and historical materials, has resulted in many unorthodox writings on culture and politics, some of which are now becoming available to the Westem reader
[ed. note: see, e.g., the upcoming work by IdiomA editorial committee members Efimova and Manovich, Russian Essays on Visual Culture (Chicago: Unversity of Chicago Press, 1993). The Philosophical Foundations of Postmodern Culture" workshop was the pioneer in this dévelopment; IdiomA continues the intellectual exchange between Western and East European scholars and critics.

The Story of IdiomA
Alla Efimova

The story begins in 1979 when I was dismembered by an immigration clerk at the border. While transcribing my documents into English she made a clean incision, without a drop of ink, and cut off the a from the end of my name. It was thrown into the sea, into the void between the two continents and two idioms. The a turned into aphros — the white sea foam and perhaps Aphrodite was born from it and stepped out onto the island of Cyprus, but was not informed of such an occurrence.

This was the slow sonorous a a a drawn out by my aunt when she spoke; the punctured a,a,a... of my father when he hesitated; the elevated capital A of Anna Akhmatova. I missed it but was learning to do without.

No, the story begins in 1989 when 1landed in Moscow again. There I met the other editors of ldiomA and knew right there and then that my precious letter could be gotten back, although it would be only a prosthesis. We shared many a’s: Efimova, Kamenetskaya, Sandomirskaya. The secret a's of women’s sighs, fearful sobs, painful cries, and quiet disappointments. But also the a of the Hebrew aleph and the Greek alpha, the allegory of beginning, the first letter of the alphabet as well as the beginning of writing and signification.

The three of us had the magic number, the magic letter and the Devil came to us in dreams, or perhaps it was the Angel of Esperanto wearing the leather jacket of an anarchist. We traveled between Moscow and New York, we translated and mistranslated, understood and misunderstood, and finally pieced together this tower of Babel on the pages of Heresies. And this is where our story ends and the real story of IdiomA begins.

Hopefully the reader will react to it with the surprise a ha! of recognition and understanding. But if the texts remain obscure, just remember that the A also belongs to anti-and against .....