Отстаивая право на Инаковость: темы еврейства, альтернативной маскулинности и гомосексуальности в трудах Игоря Кона (приложение к статье: Игорь Кон. Моя поездка в Израиль. Фрагмент воспоминаний, не вошедший в опубликованный текст книги "80 лет одиночества")

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Date
2011
Authors
Эпштейн, Алек Д.
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Abstract
Igor Kon (1928-2011), the founding father of Russian research on sexuality and the history of gay culture, was one of the few members of the Russian intelligentsia and academic community who spoke out against homophobia and in support of a tolerant attitude towards LGBT people. Feeling himself to be an intellectual outsider despite his relatively successful academic career, Igor Kon has remained faithful to the moral duty of a scientist and continued his research and public activities. Igor Kon’s attitude towards his Jewishness was sometimes ambivalent. In his essay entitled “Identity Crisis and Post-Communist Psychology” he expressed these ambivalent feelings in the most frank way: “Am I Russian? First and foremost, the word means to me an ethnic identity. Claiming to be a Russian, I’m renouncing my half-Jewish origins. Am I a Jew? Thisjias nothing to do with my citizenship, and even psychologically this claim is doubtful. My language, culture, education have been Russian. I’ve learned, long ago, to feel myself Jewish not because I did belong, but because of the anti-Semitism and discrimination”. Igor Kon had an encyclopedic erudition and a breadth of scientific interests, but he was probably more of a human rights acti vist rather than a pure scholar. This article summarizes Kon’s writings on minorities and their rights, comparing his essays on anti-Semitism and the Jewish identity (the most emblematic one is his “The Psychology of Prejudice”, published in 1966) to his books on homophobia and the gay/lesbian identity. The author argues that the right to remain different regarding social canons and cultural clichés was of crucial importance for Igor Kon, though he tried to play the role of opinion-maker and public educator in a variety of controversial issues.
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Игорь Кон, биография, творчество, евреи, маскулинность, гомосексуальность, культура, статья
Citation
Эпштейн А. Д. Отстаивая право на Инаковость: темы еврейства, альтернативной маскулинности и гомосексуальности в трудах Игоря Кона (приложение к статье: Игорь Кон. Моя поездка в Израиль. Фрагмент воспоминаний, не вошедший в опубликованный текст книги "80 лет одиночества") / Алек Д. Эпштейн // Українська орієнталістика : спеціальний випуск з юдаїки. - 2011. - С. 375-392.