HETEROTOPIA in CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN FICTION by Irina
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HETEROTOPIA IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN FICTION by Irina Anisimova B.A., Saratov State University, 2001 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2015 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Irina Anisimova It was defended on November 19, 2014 and approved by David Birnbaum, Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh Mark Leiderman (Lipovetsky), Professor, Department of Russian Studies, Germanic, and Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Colorado-Boulder Vladimir Padunov, Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh Dissertation Advisor: Nancy Condee, Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh ii Copyright © by Irina Anisimova 2015 iii HETEROTOPIA IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN FICTION Irina Anisimova, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2015 This dissertation examines Russian culture of the twenty-first century by analyzing fiction and film with speculative elements. Each chapter focuses on the core concerns of a particular author: Pelevin’s preoccupation with neocolonialism and empire, Slavnikova’s contrast between dystopian history and “utopian” death, Sorokin’s interest in historical trauma and the inner workings of terror, and Fedorchenko and Osokin’s eccentric utopian projects. The dissertation helps to understand contemporary culture, since speculative fiction’s imagined realities and envisioned futures are closely connected with sociocultural tendencies. The sustained investigation of the 2000s is merited by the fact that “the Zeroes,” as the decade is known in Russia, is characterized by significant cultural shifts. Compared to the 1990s, the 2000s can be seen in terms of a gradual turn towards much more conservative notions of identity that are often expressed through changing interpretations of Russian and Soviet history, as well as a reevaluation of Russia’s geopolitical role—topics that are central in both political discourses and cultural imaginary. A number of works in contemporary Russian fiction and film creatively reimagine geographic space and history. This fiction and film oscillate between utopian and dystopian modalities and combine ambiguous utopias/dystopias with supernatural elements. While sharing certain features with more traditional genres, these works fall outside of such traditional genre designations as utopias/dystopias and magical realism. To account for this genre hybridity, my project posits Michel Foucault’s notion of “heterotopia” as a critical lens for my analysis of this fiction. I understand heterotopia as a textual strategy in fiction and film that includes utopian/dystopian and fantastic elements, and that, through unusual temporal and spatial iv structures, interrogate dominant discourses and identity formations. Because of its ability to create a number of possible worlds, this textual strategy allows contemporary authors to both contest and engage with dominant cultural practices and discourses. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. VIII 1.0 INTRODUCTION: WHY HETEROTOPIA? ........................................................... 1 1.1 HETEROTOPIA AND THE FANTASTIC ...................................................... 8 1.2 HETEROTOPIA AND MAGICAL AUTHORITARIANISM ...................... 18 1.3 HETEROTOPIA BETWEEN CARNIVAL AND ALLEGORY .................. 31 2.0 VIKTOR PELEVIN’S IMPERIAL HETEROTOPIA ........................................... 42 2.1 SOVIET DYSTOPIA AND IMPERIAL DISCONTENTS ............................ 47 2.2 EMPIRE AND CONSUMERIST DYSTOPIA ............................................... 55 2.3 MONSTROUS ALLEGORIES OF EMPIRE................................................. 68 3.0 VLADIMIR SOROKIN’S HETEROTOPIA OF THE RETRO-FUTURE ......... 81 3.1 HETEROTOPIA OF OPRICHNINA ............................................................... 91 3.2 HETEROTOPIA OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ............................. 109 4.0 NECRO-HETEROTOPIA IN OL'GA SLAVNIKOVA’S RECENT NOVELS 124 4.1 THE IMAGINATIVE URALS ....................................................................... 130 4.2 THE VIRTUAL DYSTOPIA OF MOSCOW ............................................... 149 5.0 DENIS OSOKIN’S EXCENTRIC HETEROTOPIA ........................................... 164 5.1 REINVENTION OF THE 1917 REVOLUTION ......................................... 171 5.2 THE GENDERED GEOGRAPHY OF THE MARIS .................................. 181 vi 5.3 THE IMAGINED TRADITION OF THE MERIA ...................................... 194 6.0 TOWARDS HETEROTOPIA IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN FICTION .. 204 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 215 vii PREFACE This dissertation has gradually developed from the general interest in the fantastic in late Soviet and post-Soviet fiction: my focus has shifted from viewing post-Soviet fiction as a part of the international movement of magical realism to considering it as a separate yet related example of heterotopia. I believe that this approach allows for a more contextualized treatment of contemporary Russian fiction and film. My research has been helped by the support of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Andrew Mellon and Cultural Studies pre- doctoral fellowships. I would like to thank my dissertation committee, David Birnbaum, Mark Lipovetsky, and Vladimir Padunov, for their support in developing this project and insightful comments. My special thanks go to my adviser, Nancy Condee, who has greatly influenced my research and helped me to think of this project beyond the dissertation stage. She will always be my role model. I also would like to thank my family and friends for their great support in my work. viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION: WHY HETEROTOPIA? Fantastic characters and plots are strikingly common in contemporary Russian fiction and film: Moscow is populated by the ancient race of vampire elite (Viktor Pelevin); the past of oprichnina and serfdom reappears in Russian near future (Vladimir Sorokin); the resurrection of the 1917 revolution is combined with Bazhov’s Ural folklore and simulated reality (Ol'ga Slavnikova); the old Finno-Ugric tribe, the Meria, with its idiosyncratic funeral and sexual rites, exists alongside contemporary Russian society (Denis Osokin). Furthermore, these unusual worlds are visualized through Denis Osokin’s collaboration with film director Aleksei Fedorchenko and Vladimir Sorokin’s collaboration with Aleksandr Zel'dovich. This short account illustrates that a number of works in contemporary Russian fiction and film creatively reimagine geographic space and history. This fiction and film oscillates between utopian and dystopian modalities and combine ambiguous utopias/dystopias with supernatural elements. While sharing certain features with more traditional genres, these works fall outside of such traditional genre designations as utopias/dystopias and magical realism. My dissertation attempts to connect these fantastic plots and genre hybridity with the trends and preoccupations characteristic of contemporary Russian sociocultural moment, such as uncertainties of Russian collective identity, interpretations of 1 history, and imagining the future after the passing of modernist utopias in both the East and the West.1 While a number of studies are dedicated to Russian culture of the 1990s, the culture, especially the fiction, of the 2000s has primarily been covered in articles dedicated to individual authors.2 The sustained investigation of the 2000s is merited by the fact that “the zeroes,” as the decade is known in Russia, is characterized by significant cultural shifts. Compared to the 1990s, the 2000s can be seen in terms of a gradual turn towards much more conservative notions of identity that are often expressed through changing interpretations of Russian and Soviet history, as well as a reevaluation of Russia’s geopolitical role—topics that are central in both political discourses and the cultural imaginary. These political trends, such as growing importance of conservative and imperial ideology, are combined with purely cultural trends. Thus, new personalities have appeared on the 1 Susan Buck-Morss draws a parallel between the first and second world modernity as modernist utopian projects: “A certain kind of industrial dreamworld has dissipated, one that dominated the political imagination in both East and West for most of the century. To be sure, in the East the dream-form was a utopia of production, whereas in the West it was a utopia of consumption. But both shared intimately the optimistic vision of a mass society beyond material scarcity, and the collective, social goal, through massive industrial construction, of transforming the natural world” (3). 2 For English-language studies on the Russian culture of the 1990s, see, for example, the edited volumes by Berry and Miller-Pogacar; Balina, Condee, and Dobrenko; Epstein, Genis, and Vladiv-Glover; Lilly and Mondry. as well as monographs by Lipovetsky, Porter, and Shneidman. 2 Russian cultural scene: while some authors popular in the 1990s are no longer actively publishing, the new authors