Pavel Florensky’s Concept of Organ Projection and Herbert McLuhan’s Idea of Extensions of Man: The Subject in the Era of Incarnated Utopias

Abstract

The article analyses utopian projects of Fr. Pavel Florensky and K. Malevich, who are compared with Herbert Marshall McLuhan’s idea of expanding body. A special attention is paid to the concepts of organic projection developed by Florensky and to the concepts of excarnation presented by K. Malevich. The article seeks to find out how these utopians influence on the perceptual abilities of subject. The author suggests that if in the case of fascism technology leads to the aestheticization of politics and in the case of communism to the politicization of art, then in the modern times the aestheticization of subject is observed. Comparing the utopian projects of Florensky, Malevich and McLuhan, the author concludes that not all utopias of the 20th century have so far been overcome.