Miglena Nikolchina
(In Literary journal, 31/2020)
I ask myself whether we deserve a philosopher like Boyan Manchev and I likewise answer myself: probably not. But since he still happened to be amongst us, I will make a few guesses as to what makes it possible to have such an interesting and distinguished thinker.
First of all, let us bear in mind the accumulations of the revivalist enlightenment project that has been under way ever since the 19th century. Despite the occasional controversial opinions, even communism did not suspend this process of accumulation on account of at least two reasons. One of them is that the Revival enlightenment process continues to function as the political unconscious of communism. On the other hand, although its own enlightenment project posed serious ideological limitations and even follies, one cannot disregard the principal pathos of communism in recognizing the value of science, humanitarian studies, philosophy.
In the case of Boyan Manchev, this continuity is quite direct since his father was the linguist Krassimir Manchev. During the 1960s, Krassimir Manchev was granted a scholarship to study in Paris like other well-known Bulgarian intellectuals at the time. But unlike, say, Tzvetan Todorov and Julia Kristeva, he chose to return to Bulgaria. As he did so, however, not only did he maintain his connection to the scientific community in France, but he also set out to establish a Bulgarian Guillaumist School which was perhaps better known in France than in Bulgaria, although much has been done recently to restore this particular episode of Bulgaria’s scientific development. I would also mention the significance of the 1980s period when a strong emphasis was laid on philosophico-theoretical thought and communication, as it was during this last decade of communism that the ideas of Boyan Manchev’s closest teachers and predecessors were taking form. This period brought the emergence of attitudes and orientations, passions and ambitions for scientific communication with the world at large, that came to be firmly established during the 1990s – the decade when Boyan Manchev began to develop as a scientific figure.
And finally, we probably should not dismiss the significance of the New Bulgarian University’s academic milieu where – despite the purely pragmatic orientation of a private university – we witness a top-level research staff of philosophy professors.
I mentioned Krassimir Manchev in connection to Boyan Manchev who seems to take up the former’s choice of scientific-biographical program. Due to geopolitical reasons, this program seems easier to achieve at present, but with regard to the energy and concentration required for its achievement, it can hardly be defined as easy. This is namely the program of a trans-linguistic and cross-border scientific achievement. Boyan Manchev is a researcher who is exceptionally well-established within an international context, both scientifically and pedagogically, yet without ever losing his relatedness – biographical and scientific – to the Bulgarian cultural environment and language.
Boyan Manchev has numerous publications, including monographs, in many languages – mostly Bulgarian and French, but also Italian, English, Japanese, German. I ought to emphasize that these are not translations, because even when some of his writings overlap to a certain extent, he practically rewrites his books anew in accordance with the language they will be published in. We can so witness a peculiar multiplication of his scientific persona as it traverses different languages and articulations. This tendency is also related to the pedagogical activities and the institutions traversed by Boyan Manchev himself. Across Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo and, of course, Bulgaria (both at the New Bulgarian University and at Sofia University), he is always immensely and passionately committed to his work with the students. Boyan Manchev’s work has the same multilevel comprehensiveness as his practical realization as a scientist. It covers the problematic scope of ontology, aesthetics, literary and cultural studies, political science.
In recent times, his work began to crystallize into a project whose heading he formulated as the philosophical fantastic. Liberated from the required customary erudition of humanitarian studies, he lends his latest books the freedom to expand equally on his philosophical priorities and his remarkable poetic expression. What are the priorities? I will not delve into this in detail, but in general I would say it has to do with his interest in the inhuman understood as (anti)natural and (anti)cosmic, as opposed to the digitalized, diminished, marionette, zombified future of mankind that nowadays seems somewhat frightening as a possible perspective. That is to say, amongst Boyan Manchev’s forms of critique and resistance, the deepest form of resistance, in my opinion, is revealed precisely at this point – the belief and the hope for the excessive, uncontrollable inhuman quality of the human that will deliver it from being reduced to an imitation, an empty shell or a zombie. Hence Manchev’s interest in the formless, the unimaginable, the unformulable, and likewise the fluid and the nebulous, to put it in accordance with the title of one of his most recent books (Clouds). This program, which in terms of school and continuity is related to Jean-Luc Nancy (Boyan Manchev is a close friend of Nancy), demonstrates remarkable originality and autonomy of its own. From one book to another, Manchev follows his own path of philosophical reflection that engages in dialogue with Bulgarian authors and philosophers, enjoying the support of ardent followers. Before concluding this brief overview, I wish to further emphasize yet another aspect that is unprecedented in regard to the Bulgarian context, something that takes place as such for the first time. Unless we recall Ivan Stanev who combined together within his own peculiar persona the philosophico-theoretical reflection and the theater as the art of stage performance.
Furthermore, having mentioned Boyan Manchev’s relation to the theater and his creative collaboration with Ani Vaseva and the METHEOR collective of incredible actors, one could ask oneself whether we deserve such a philosophical theater. Once again, I’m tempted to say no. And yet such a theater does exist – with its own consistency, large-scale execution and harmonious interaction between conceptual intention and ever-changing stage performance. Boyan Manchev turns fifty, it has happened to other people before… yet, it is a rare occasion when fifty years of age have been so fruitful and the anniversary jubilee has nonetheless remained so young.
Translated from the Bulgarian by Philip Stoilov