Cultural history and cultural criticism are normally devoted to clarifying meanings, to turning the incomprehensible into the comprehensible. The goal of Yampolsky's new book is not to clarify but to lay bear the mechanisms by which uncertainty emerges in culture.

The book is structured as a collection of essays on various themes, but all are united by a common thread. With a broad multidisciplinary purview, referencing philosophy, aesthetics and the theory and history of art and literature, Yampolsky shows how the category of uncertainty operates in culture – what it sometimes known as “formlessness”, “chaos”, “nothing” and “chance”. He illustrates his discussion with reference to medieval mysticism, Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, the evolution of philology, the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Woody Allen, Alexander Sokurov and Zhang Yimou.