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Power, Sexuality, and the Masochistic Aesthetic from Sacher-Masoch to Kharms" (2016)

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Power, Sexuality, and the Masochistic Aesthetic from Sacher-Masoch to Kharms University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Power, Sexuality, and the Masochistic Aesthetic From Sacher- Masoch to Kharms Maya Vinokour University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Eastern European Studies Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, German Literature Commons, and the Slavic Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Vinokour, Maya, "Power, Sexuality, and the Masochistic Aesthetic From Sacher-Masoch to Kharms" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2078. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2078 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2078 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Power, Sexuality, and the Masochistic Aesthetic From Sacher-Masoch to Kharms Abstract This project centers on what I call the “masochistic aesthetic,” which emerged as literature dovetailed with medicine and law in German-speaking Europe and Russia around 1900. I argue that incipient totalitarian societies instrumentalized art and literature to produce citizens who enthusiastically consented to painful social discipline — that is, political masochists. Masochistic narratives like Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs (1870), Anton Chekhov’s The Duel (1891), or Andrei Platonov’s Happy Moscow (1933-6) reflect the ethnographic attention to borderlands, regulation of the body, and indefinite delay of pleasure inherent in the imperial or totalitarian settings that engendered them. After tracing the origins of the masochistic aesthetic to the synthesis of sexology and literature in Austria-Hungary, I track its passage into degeneration discourse in late-imperial Russia (Lev Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov) and the labor rationalization movements of interwar German-speaking Europe (Franz Kafka, Robert Walser). I conclude with an analysis of political masochism’s apotheosis in Stalinism (Andrei Platonov, Daniil Kharms), showing how the convergence of literature with bio-centric labor theory in the Soviet 1930s produced an ethos of joyful self-sacrifice and indefinitely delayed gratification. By casting masochism as a tool of political and ethnographic normalization, my work revises the traditionally psychoanalytic approach to the phenomenon in Russian culture. Mobilizing masochism’s understudied “Slavic” underpinnings and the Germanophone influence on its Stalinist incarnation, this project offers insight into the uneasy nexus of politics and private life that gave rise to Stalinism and Nazism. My research contributes to debates in comparative literature, labor history, and gender and sexuality studies, addressing themes central to the intertwined cultural histories of Russia and German-speaking Europe. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Comparative Literature and Literary Theory First Advisor Kevin M. Platt Second Advisor Catriona MacLeod Keywords cultural history, gender, Nazism, sexuality, Stalinism Subject Categories Comparative Literature | Eastern European Studies | European Languages and Societies | German Literature | Slavic Languages and Societies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2078 POWER, SEXUALITY, AND THE MASOCHISTIC AESTHETIC FROM SACHER-MASOCH TO KHARMS Maya Vinokour A DISSERTATION in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation Co-Supervisor _________________ __________________ Kevin M.F. Platt Catriona MacLeod Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures Professor of German Graduate Group Chairperson __________________ Kevin M.F. Platt, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures Dissertation Committee Ilya Vinitsky, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures Simon Richter, Professor of German POWER, SEXUALITY, AND THE MASOCHISTIC AESTHETIC FROM SACHER-MASOCH TO KHARMS COPYRIGHT 2016 Maya Vinokour This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ny-sa/2.0/ To my parents, Elena and Valerii Vinokour iii ABSTRACT POWER, SEXUALITY, AND THE MASOCHISTIC AESTHETIC FROM SACHER-MASOCH TO KHARMS Maya Vinokour Kevin M.F. Platt Catriona MacLeod This project centers on what I call the “masochistic aesthetic,” which emerged as literature dovetailed with medicine and law in German-speaking Europe and Russia around 1900. I argue that incipient totalitarian societies instrumentalized art and literature to produce citizens who enthusiastically consented to painful social discipline — that is, political masochists. Masochistic narratives like Leopold von Sacher- Masoch’s Venus in Furs (1870), Anton Chekhov’s The Duel (1891), or Andrei Platonov’s Happy Moscow (1933-6) reflect the ethnographic attention to borderlands, regulation of the body, and indefinite delay of pleasure inherent in the imperial or totalitarian settings that engendered them. After tracing the origins of the masochistic aesthetic to the synthesis of sexology and literature in Austria-Hungary, I track its passage into degeneration discourse in late-imperial Russia (Lev Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov) and the labor rationalization movements of interwar German-speaking Europe (Franz Kafka, Robert Walser). I conclude with an analysis of political masochism’s apotheosis in Stalinism (Andrei Platonov, Daniil Kharms), showing how the convergence of literature with bio-centric labor theory in the Soviet 1930s produced an ethos of joyful self-sacrifice and indefinitely delayed gratification. By casting masochism as a tool of iv political and ethnographic normalization, my work revises the traditionally psychoanalytic approach to the phenomenon in Russian culture. Mobilizing masochism’s understudied “Slavic” underpinnings and the Germanophone influence on its Stalinist incarnation, this project offers insight into the uneasy nexus of politics and private life that gave rise to Stalinism and Nazism. My research contributes to debates in comparative literature, labor history, and gender and sexuality studies, addressing themes central to the intertwined cultural histories of Russia and German-speaking Europe. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Introduction. Political and Aesthetic Masochism in the Twentieth Century ...................... 1 Chapter 1. The Birth of the Masochistic Aesthetic from the Spirit of Empire ................. 14 Chapter 2. Political Masochism in Fin-de-Siècle Russian Culture ................................... 64 Chapter 3. The Organic Turn: Labor, Technology, and the Body in Robert Walser and Franz Kafka ..................................................................................................................... 111 Chapter 4. The Masochistic Aesthetic in its Stalinist Phase .......................................... 181 Chapter 5. Liquid Pains and Pleasures: Andrei Platonov and Daniil Kharms ................ 231 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 294 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 298 vi Introduction: Political and Aesthetic Masochism in the Twentieth Century In our Soviet Union, comrades, people are not born — only organisms are. In our country [u nas], people are made [delaiutsia]: tractor drivers, motorists, mechanics, academicians, scientists, and so on. I myself am among those who were made rather than born. I was not born a human being, I became [sdelalsia] a human being.1 —Trofim Lysenko (1898-1976) The February 1935 speech from which these words are drawn elicited a standing ovation from the audience and even earned a vociferous “Bravo!” from Stalin himself.2 The effects of the dictator’s accolade were swift and far-reaching, propelling Lysenko to stardom within the Soviet scientific establishment. Lysenkoism, a term that encompasses both its creator’s pseudoscientific theories and the political campaign he spearheaded against Soviet geneticists, would persist as the ideological underpinning of Soviet biology for many years, outliving even Stalin. Not until Khrushchev was deposed in 1964 did evidence-based biological research begin to regain its stature. In 1965, Lysenko was relieved of his position as head of Genetics Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which he had occupied since 1941, and the ban on genetic research was officially lifted. Characteristically devoid of scientific terminology or data-based conclusions, the passage above not only encapsulates Lysenko’s approach to agriculture, but distills the essence of Stalinist ideology at the dawn of the Stakhanovite movement. By defining humanity as an earned privilege associated with a specific form of labor (tractor driving, scientific research) rather than an innate condition, Lysenko articulates the dominant 1 principle of Stalinism: each Soviet subject bears ultimate responsibility for forging him or herself in accordance with the principles of the reigning ideology. This ideology, which by the
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