Which the Society Not Only Embraced, but Internalized, the Nature of the Soviet Ex- Periment

which the society not only embraced, but internalized, the nature of the Soviet ex- periment. As is probably clear from this brief review, Russian Modernity is almost as diverse and multifaceted as the phenomenon it seeks to analyze. So diverse, in fact, that the articles on occasion read more like free-standing case studies than components of a single scholarly endeavor. This could be due to Hoffmann and Kotsonis' eagerness to maximize the variety of subjects and themes considered in the collection. But it might also be due to the fleeting nature of the very idea of a linear, uniform European ex- perience with modernity. Studies insisting on the existence of a single, coherent form of modernity often ignore questions of historical agency and contingency, relying in- stead on argumentation that is selective, reductionist or banal. It is a testimony to the contributors and editors of this volume that Russian modernity turns out to have been so cosmopolitan and varied. David Brandenberger Harvard University Ellen E. Berry and Mikhail N. Epstein. Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. x, 338 pp. $49.95. Though Mikhail Epstein is perhaps best known in the West for his original and provocative work on Russian postmodernism, Epstein himself would probably see such studies as merely a subset of his larger project: bis decades-long elaboration of the theory of "transculture." Those familiar with Epstein primarily in English transla- tion may recall his brief essay "Culture - Culturology - Transculture" from After the Future_(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), which sets the ground- work for dialogues between American cultural studies and Russian culturology and American multiculturalism vs. transculture. Transcultural Experiments gives the Eng- lish-speaking reader the opportunity to delve more deeply into these oppositions and to test the basic notions of transculture in a variety of contexts. Epstein, a longtime advocate of creative collaboration (which he develops here into the notion of "hyperauthorship"), finds a worthy and able partner in Ellen E. Berry, an American professor of English who has already done a great deal of work on contemporary Russian crticial theory. Though most of the chapters in Transcul- tural Experiments are attributed to a single author, the entire book is suffused with the spirit of intellectual and creative dialogue, which is then embodied more concretely in the book's last pages: "In Place of a Conclusion: Transcultural Dialogue," in which the two authors discuss their conflicting and evolving attitudes towards such key con- cepts as Marxism, feminism, and national character. Epstein and Berry elaborate a number of different models of co-authorship: the experiments in collective essay-writing in mid-1980s Moscow, the joint creation of the fictional Japanese author Araki Yasuasada, Epstein's web-based InteLnet project (http:,�i/www.eniory.edti/IN-l'ELNE'1'/), and the campus-based essay events they ar- ranged at Emory and Bowling Green. While all of these efforts have some appeal (as well as also suffering from the self-conscious preciousness that tends to afflict most "happenings"), the most inspiring model for creative collaboration Berry and Epstein offer is actually their own: the productive meeting of two very different, but comple- mentary minds. Unfortunately, the content of their collaboration is ultimately less satisfying than its form. Though Berry grounds her discussion of multiculturalism and cultural studies in the contemporary scholarship on the topic, for Epstein, it is something of a straw man. He cites Sardar and Van Loon's Introducing Cultural Studies, letting their defi- nition of the field stand in for the field as a whole. This facilitates his contention that cultural studies reduces everything to questions of power. By the same token, his chapter "From Difference to Interference" argues for a transcendence of identity politics by warnung that multicultural models of difference tend to reify abstract notions of selfhood in the name of multicultural diversity: "The point is that difference, when relying on its own 'selfness' and stability, on the value of difference as such, is easily susceptible to oppositional adaptations, as evidenced by the advancement of pure oppositions, like 'male/female,' 'black/white,' 'heterosexual/homosexual'..." (p. 98). Where is the notion of social construction, which is central to so much contemporary scholarship on questions of identity? Categories such as race and sexual identity are routinely subject to critique nowadays, with a widespread recognition that race, as well as, for example, a "gay identity," are contingent, socially constructed concept grounded in history. Ironically enough, Epstein is guilty of what the Russians call "discovering America": advancing an old notion as if it were new, Indeed, the constant appeal to the creative contrast between American and Russian cultural approaches is both the book's strength and its weakness: for one thing, it threatens to recapitulate the very sort of dualistic model that both Berry and Epstein reject. Moreover, the authors do not always follow through on the potential that such a comparison could have. The Russian culturological desire to transcend politics and the American obsession with power both make sense in their cultural contexts. Epstein is quite eloquent about the reasons why Russians would find the American approach dis- tasteful, but does not recognize (at least explicitly) why a focus on ideology would be appealing in a culture that, while thoroughly ideologized, does not wear its ideology on its sleeve. He also makes tantalizing aside comments about the fate of culturology and transculture in Russia that beg for elaboration. He notes that culturology "has be- come one of tljie main branches of the humanistic scholarship in post-Soviet Russia," which is demonstrated by the fact that many universities "have replaced those depart- ments of 'scientific communism' and 'Marxism-Leninism'" with programs in culturology (p. 23). Yet this is precisely a moment that demands an ideological/political reading: it suggests that culturology is filling up the same ideological space (and serv- ing the same function) as these not-so-Iamented disciplines (and it also ignores the fact that the word "culturology" is often simply being appropriated as an umbrella term for an introduction to the humanities, and therefore collapsing back into Soviet- era notions of kul'turnost'). Far more significant is the conclusion to Epstein's discussion of the history of transculture in late-Soviet Moscow. He notes that one of the new , institutions that accommodated his Laboratory of Contemporary Culture, the Experi- mental Center for Creativity, descended into an attempt to "synthesize communism .

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