Andrei Platonov and the avant-garde life-creation sub specie semioticae

Platonov‟s life-creation corresponds to his overall positivist utopianism represented in his main texts (such as “Kotlovan” and “Chevengur”). Russian Avant-Gardist “zhiznestroitel'stvo” in its various “socialist” forms (Bogdanov, Chiuzhak, Tretiakov, Gastev) may relate quite well to Platonov‟s constructivist and life-building utopia based on his passionately orchestrated “rationalistic urge” as displayed in promoting the positivist ideas of engineering, electrification, amelioration etc. Conceptions associated with the ideas of preserving eternal life (human bios or biota) with respect to the infinite Universe, are extremely relevant to Platonov, who explored the legacy of Nikolai Fedorov, and possibly was interested in the innovative doctrines emerging in the sciences, championed particularly by Constantine Tziolkovsky. The main concern of “overcoming” the natural flow of human history seems to serve a unifying utopian ground for all these. Dwelling on the life-building aesthetics of Platonov it might be interesting and quite useful to mention the notion of “homeostasis” (ὅμοιος: “similarity” and στάσις: “stillness of standing”) which was experimentally studied by Platonov‟s Western contemporaries Claude Bernard and Walter Bradford Cannon (in the later twenties). The notion of homeostasis dealt with a certain living system which has an innate capacity to sustain itself for an extended period of time demonstrating a successful and uninterrupted activity ensuing upcoming siblings and other pedigrees of natural growth and expansion