Cheburashka: Notes on the History of the Immanent Impossible

The paper deals with the analyses of “cringe” as a specific affect which us crucial for understanding of the current cultural situation. “Cringe” is situated into the broad historic situation and connected to such categories as “beautiful” and “sublime”, and also with a figure of a double betrayal, which is central for current thought (for instance into the projects of Slavoj Žižek and Reza Negarestani). The central point of the analyses is the appearance of cringe in Dmitry Dyachenko’s Cheburashka (2023). Using the plastic-dynamic analysis based on the recent advances of coincidental theory enables to discover the symptomatic importance of the figure of Cheburashka. The clarification of the plastic and dynamic structures that determine this figure of cringe-bearer enables to connect it to the main topics of the ontologies of recent decades and question its onto-economic meaning.

This questioning results into the discovery of the special place of “the world of cringe” into the onto-economic history of the past two centuries, a history of substance as “Immanent Impossible.” The clarification of the specific features that connect Cheburaska not only to the central themes of “new ontologies,” but also to the heroes of the soviet cinema of 1970s and 1980s, enable to distinguish the epoch of the cringe as a transitional step into the history of the Immanent Impossible: a step of the request for a new onto-economic order, that of holding-together-of-the-distinct. The basic weakness of Cheburashka lies in the fact that he can articulate this demand, but can not follow it. The paper points to a special kind of enlightenment which is needed in order to fulfil what Cheburashka demands.