UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Resistant Postmodernisms: Writing Postcommunism in Armenia and Russia Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/32m003t0 Author Douzjian, Myrna Angel Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Resistant Postmodernisms: Writing Postcommunism in Armenia and Russia A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature by Myrna Angel Douzjian 2013 @ Copyright by Myrna Angel Douzjian 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Resistant Postmodernisms: Writing Postcommunism in Armenia and Russia by Myrna Angel Douzjian Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor David W. MacFadyen, Co-Chair Professor Kathleen L. Komar, Co-Chair Many postcolonial scholars have questioned the ethics of postmodern cultural production. Critics have labeled postmodernism a conceptual dead end – a disempowering aesthetic that does not offer a theory of agency in response to the workings of empire. This dissertation enters the conversation about the political alignment of postmodernism through a comparative study of postcommunist writing in Armenia and Russia, where the debates about the implications and usefulness of postmodernism have been equally charged. This project introduces the directions in which postcommunist postmodernisms developed in Armenia and Russia – in locally unique ways that reflected both the problems ii of the Soviet past and the post-Soviet present. It then moves on to an analysis of the work of five playwrights and novelists: Aghasi Ayvazyan, Perch Zeytuntsyan, Gurgen Khanjyan, Victor Pelevin, and Vladimir Sorokin. In reading the plays and novels of these authors, this study identifies several formal and stylistic connections between the post-Soviet renditions of the theater of the absurd and postmodernism: a resistance to interpretation accomplished by indeterminacy; a desire to push beyond the limits of logic; an emphasis on signs and symbols as opposed to their referents; and a rejection of well-made generic forms through the incorporation of intertextuality and textual play. On the thematic level, these plays and novels employ madness and confinement as metaphors for the problems of postcommunist nation building and politics. Through these images, the seemingly random, absurd texts of postcommunist postmodern culture unrelentingly interrogate the state apparatuses of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia; they insist upon a confrontation with Soviet history as a means by which to recognize the Soviet Union and, in the post-Soviet era, Russia as empire. Through the suggestion that the post-Soviet period entails a process of post- Sovietization rather than a radical break from the Soviet period, these texts challenge past and present power structures in the newly emerged post-Soviet nations. Taken together, the contemporaneous works of Armenian and Russian authors of the post-Soviet period offer a productive site for understanding resistant postmodernisms – that is to say, the politically subversive dimensions of postmodern literature and its critical power. iii The dissertation of Myrna Angel Douzjian is approved. Peter S. Cowe David W. MacFadyen, Co-Chair Kathleen L. Komar, Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iv In memory of Michael Henry Heim, whose passion for the humanities and intellectual generosity continue to inspire me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 The Subversive Power of Post-Soviet Armenian and Russian Postmodernisms……..……..1 PART II: MADNESS AND CONFINEMENT IN THE THEATER OF THE ABSURD 2 The Politics of the Theater of the Absurd: New Considerations Offered by Post-Soviet Armenian Drama……………………………..23 3 Independence as Confinement: Reading Space, Time, and the Nation in Aghasi Ayvazyan’s Props (Dekorner)……………35 4 Gogol’s Madman in Perch Zeytuntsyan’s Born and Died (Tsnvel ē u mahats‘el): A Metatheatrical Critique of the Armenian State…................................................................54 5 The ‘Soviet’ in Post-Soviet and the Interchangeability of Authority in Gurgen Khanjyan’s The Guards of Ruins (Averakneri bahaknerě)………………………….77 PART III: THE POSTMODERN NOVEL AS PSYCHOLOGICAL JOURNAL 6 The Hospital as Post-Soviet, Postmodern Chronotope…………………………………….92 7 The Soviet Past and the Anxiety of Independence in Gurgen Khanjyan’s The Hospital (Hiwandanots‘)…………………………………………104 8 Russia Reimagined: Reading Schizophrenia and Emptiness in Victor Pelevin’s Chapaev and Pustota (Chapaev i Pustota) ................................................119 PART IV: THE INTERPLAY OF DRAMA AND PROSE IN THERAPEUTIC THEATER 9 Vladimir Sorokin’s Postmodern Absurdism: Madness, Memory, and History in Dismorphomania and The Honeymoon (Hochzeitsreise)…………………………………..143 PART V: CONCLUSION 10 Reflections on Postmodernism in the Context of Comparative Post-Soviet Studies……………………………………………….171 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………..179 vi Curriculum Vitae MYRNA DOUZJIAN EDUCATION Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature, minor in Russian Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2002, summa cum laude and departmental honors PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES Select Publications, Presentations, and Guest Lectures “Literary Production in Twentieth-Century Armenia: From Stifling State Control to the Uncertainties of Independence.” A Handbook of Armenian Studies: Volume on Philology. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, forthcoming 2013. “The Reconceptualization of Diaspora Literature in Post-Soviet Armenian Criticism,” Symposium on Diaspora and Armenian Literature, University of California, Berkeley, 2012. “Armenian Literary Culture in America,” Institute for Armenian Studies, USC, 2009. “Dealing with and in the Emergent Nation-State: Moves toward Reorientation in Armenian Literature after 1991,” Workshop on Armenian Literature, St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, 2009. “Madness, Memory, and Forgetting in Post-Soviet Emptiness: Aghasi Ayvazyan’s Props,” Workshop on Armenian Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2009. “A Postcolonial Armenia?” Middle East Studies Association Conference, Washington, D.C., 2008. “De-Centering the Universal: The Role of National Literatures in Reading World Literature as a World,” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Puebla, Mexico, 2007. “Teaching Close Reading & Theory,” Comparative Pedagogies: Critical Reflections on a Neglected Art, UCLA, 2007 Assorted Academic Work Contributor, Critics’ Forum, <www.criticsforum.org> “On the Sidelines, but Noteworthy: Three Documentaries at the AFFMA Film Festival This Weekend,” November 2012. “Filmic Approaches to Catastrophe: Narrative and Trauma in Levon Minasian’s Le Piano and Eric Nazarian’s Bolis,” November 2011. “Notes on Three Films Screened at the 2010 ARPA Film Festival: Exploring the Modes of Representation in Barking Island, The Third Rider, and Aghet: A Genocide,” October 2010. vii “Disregarding the Diaspora’s Cultural Production? The Diaspora Ministry’s Essentialist View of Armenian Identity,” March 2010. “Perennially Transnational: Armenian Literature after the Genocide,” November 2009. Editor, On the Brink: Three Years of Struggle for Armenian Independence by Sergey Ambartsumian. Trans. Tatevos Paskevichyan. Yerevan: National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, 2010. Translator, Props by Aghasi Ayvazyan. Contemporary Armenian Drama: Voices of Change. Ed. Herand Markarian. Yerevan: Writers Union of Armenia, 2006. From the Armenian. TEACHING EXPERIENCE Department of Comparative Literature, UCLA Instructor “Voices of Resistance in 20th Century Literature and Film,” Spring 2012 “Representations of Leadership and Power from Antiquity to the Middle Ages,” Winter 2009, Summer 2010 “Voices of Resistance in Literature from the Enlightenment to the Present,” Summer 2009, Spring 2010 “Representations of Colonialism and Empire in the 20th Century,” Spring and Summer 2009 “The Aesthetics of Madness from the Enlightenment to the Present,” Summer 2008 “Training Seminar on Teaching Literature and Composition,” Fall 2007 Teaching Assistant “Survey of Literature from the Enlightenment to the Present,” Fall 2004, Spring 2007, Winter 2008, Spring 2011 “Survey of Literature from Antiquity to the Middle Ages,” Winter 2005, Fall 2006, Fall 2010, Winter 2011 “Survey of Literature from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment,” Winter 2007 Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA Teaching Assistant “Introduction to Russian Civilization until 1917,” Spring 2008, Winter 2010 “The Russian Novel in Translation,” Spring 2005 Department of Classics, UCLA Teaching Assistant “Ancient Epic: Greek and Roman Epic in Translation,” Fall 2011 Department of History, UCLA Teaching Assistant “Armenian Oral History,” Spring 2006 viii PART I: INTRODUCTION Chapter 1 The Subversive Power of Post-Soviet Armenian and Russian Postmodernisms “We live in an era when there are no more political prisoners, but we still behave as if we were all still in the camps,” says the Young Intellectual in Vladimir Makanin’s 1993 novella Baize-covered Table with Decanter (Stol, pokrytyi suknom i s grafinom poseredine) (110). This remark in reference to the early post-Soviet period resounded in a significant body of literature produced in the former Second World in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and well