Хетеротопии на липсата: увод в частното колекциониране по времето на социализма. Случаят Ботьо Бараков (1914 – 1997)
Heterotopias of lack: an introduction to private collecting during socialism. The case of Botyo Barakov (1914–1997)

Summary/Abstract: This study lays the groundwork for a possible reading of socialist everyday life—its desires, lacks, failures, and peculiarities—through the marginal topic of private collecting practices and the biographies of their subjects (the collectors) during the period. To this end, the study mobilises a critical constellation of concepts and definitions: heterotopia of lack; desire for possession (i.e., collecting); the ‘almost’ as a figure of the impossible desire for possession; phantasmatic lustration as a radicalisation of psychoanalytic working-through (Durcharbeitung) of socialism’s trauma, etc. By employing these notions, the text seeks to enrich the conceptual terrain of the cultural history of (post)socialism. It also aims to develop new perspectives not only on collecting as a specific practice, but also on the fantasies, desires, and lacks—of possession, of the One, of freedom, of expression, and so forth—that structure socialist ideology in both its early stages and later developments. Furthermore, the study reintroduces the forgotten figure of the patron, collector, and ‘eccentric’ Botyo Barakov and his utopian project for an absolute collection, The Ship of the Arts. Drawing on archival materials about Botyo and his ship, journalistic sources, and interviews, it applies the proposed conceptual apparatus to uncover the complex network of practices, people, and circumstances that led to the almost-realisation (failure) of the Ship as a phantasm of the One. A phantasm symptomatically announced in September 1944. By combining the theoretical construction of operative concepts with the illumination of neglected archival curiosities, the study proposes a more inquisitive way of reading socialism. A way that moves beyond the discursive self-positionings of hatred, nostalgia, and irony as dominant modes of relating to socialist trauma.

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