The Post-Soviet Condition: Cultural Reconfigurations of Russian Identity
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THE POST-SOVIET CONDITION: CULTURAL RECONFIGURATIONS OF RUSSIAN IDENTITY by Gerald Matthew McCausland BA, Middlebury College, 1983 MA, University of Massachusetts, 1986 MA, Middlebury College, 1990 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2006 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Gerald Matthew McCausland It was defended on June 19, 2006 and approved by Nancy Condee, Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Helena Goscilo, Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Henry Krips, Professor, Department of Communications and Rhetoric Vladimir Padunov, Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Dissertation Director ii © Gerald Matthew McCausland 2006 iii THE POST-SOVIET CONDITION: CULTURAL RECONFIGURATIONS OF RUSSIAN IDENTITY Gerald Matthew McCausland, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2006 This dissertation is an examination of the problematic of Russian identity as manifest in the prose literature and cinema during the last two decades of the twentieth century. The reassertion of Russian “national identity” in the post-Soviet Russian Federation masks a crisis, the historical roots of which extend back to the development of Imperial Russia. The analysis employs the tools of Lacanian psychoanalysis to diagnose this crisis and to analyze the almost unsurmountable difficulties involved in the struggle either to recover or to create anew a usable Russian identity for the twenty-first century. The first chapter reviews the theoretical literature on nationalism as well as studies of the problematic conception of Russian nationhood. It also grounds the use of Lacanian theory for cultural analysis and illustrates, through a case study of Ivan Dykhovichnyi’s 1992 film Moscow Parade, the utility of a carefully deployed psychoanalytic interpretation of a cultural text from the period under consideration. The following four chapters contain analyses of four identifiable trends in late- and post- Soviet Russian literature and cinema. The heirs to the Village Prose movement, in their engagement with the postmodern environment of this period, reveal in their works an attempt to recover a “lost” identity that is trapped within the self-reflecting structure of an Imaginary Russia. Advocates of the postmodern in Russian culture deconstruct a Symbolic network of cultural texts in which the dissonant discourses of nation and empire generate an identity that seeks substance in the ephemeral. As the sots-art movement spread from graphic arts to literature and film, it illustrated the ultimate logic of a cultural identity based on the endless iv generation of ideological signifiers. Finally, the young writer Viktor Pelevin and filmmakers such as Karen Shakhnazarov illustrate the lure and the dangers of a culture that seizes upon fantasy as a way out of the cultural conundrum. The same analytical tools are deployed in the concluding chapter to argue that the period under consideration has come to an end and that Russian culture has entered a new period. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This writing of this dissertation was a long and sometimes lonely process, which makes my debts to teachers, colleagues, and friends greater than I can ever adequately acknowledge. One of my first encounters at the University of Pittsburgh was with the intellectual energy and daring of Professor Vladimir Padunov. He has taught me how to indulge my curiosity, and to pursue intellectual inquiry wherever it may lead. He has been my most important mentor during my time in Pittsburgh, and I would almost certainly not have started much less finished this project without his encouragement and faith in my abilities. I have benefitted tremendously from Nancy Condee’s combination of depth and breadth of knowledge and am grateful for her feedback to my writing, which was always both incisively critical and respectful of my intellectual struggle. From my earliest years in Pittsburgh I have benefitted from Helena Goscilo’s gernerosity in matters both intellectual and mundane, and her support has been critical to my perseverance over the long course of research and writing. Henry Krips not only introduced me to the work of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek, but gave me the courage to engage their theories in my own academic discipline. All four members of my dissertation committee have contributed to my intellectual formation, and my work will always bear the trace of their knowledge, gifts, and inspiration. I have been privileged over the last seven years to be associated with the Pittsburgh Russian Film Symposium. The discussions and activities of this yearly event have contributed to my intellectual development as much as any single endeavor and I am grateful to all who have participated over the years. I am grateful to the staff of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian and East European Studies (CREES) not only for significant financial support for my studies but also for the friendship and encouragement I have received from them. The moral and intellectual support of my colleagues has been crucial throughout my years of graduate study. Vitaly Chernetsky, Seth Graham, Susanne Kord, Leslie Morris, Petre Petrov, Aleksandr (Sasha) Prokhorov, Elena Prokhorova, Dawn Seckler, Vladimir Strukov, and Jennifer Sunseri became not only valued friends but also important role models. I am grateful to all of them. The breathtaking intellectual energy of Mark Lipovetsky has often left me breathless but has also been an inspiration to me, and I am grateful for his guidance and support at several crucial junctures. I have benefited from conversations with many scholars and teachers in Russia, among whom I would particularly like to thank Aleksandr Ivanov, Vladimir Malakhov, and Elena Petrovskaia. Many years ago, fate saw fit to introduce me to Viktor Erofeev, writer and researcher at the Institute of World Literatures in Moscow. It is that meeting that sparked within me my somewhat perverse interest in contemporary Russian culture, and it is a meeting that I have never had cause to regret. No debt can match the one I owe my parents, Joan and Gerald F. McCausland. Where all evidence should have led them to despair of their son ever amounting to anything, their support of me has been unfailing and unconditional. Their faith in me truly passes all understanding, and I dedicate this work to them. vi Table of Contents Chapter 1. Russia’s Ineffable Identity ............................................................................................. 1 1.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Does Russia Exist? ................................................................................................... 5 1.3 A Madman (Mis)Speaks ........................................................................................ 12 1.4 Postmodernism and Russian Identity ..................................................................... 22 1.5 Psychoanalysis and Culture ................................................................................... 31 1.6 The Void ................................................................................................................ 38 Chapter 2. Imaginary Russia .......................................................................................................... 49 2.1 In Search of the Good Russia ................................................................................ 49 2.2 Corrupted Russia .................................................................................................... 56 2.3 Identifying Russia .................................................................................................. 61 2.4 Bad Russia ............................................................................................................. 65 2.5 Mysterious Russia .................................................................................................. 76 Chapter 3. The Post-Soviet Unconscious ...................................................................................... 80 3.1 Other Prose ............................................................................................................ 80 3.2 The Desire of the Text ........................................................................................... 87 3.3 The Postmodernism of Viktor Erofeev .................................................................. 96 3.4 The Slippery Signifier .......................................................................................... 108 Chapter 4. The Discourse of the Psychotic .................................................................................. 113 4.1 Sots-art ................................................................................................................. 113 4.2 Sorokin and his Style ........................................................................................... 118 4.3 Text Gone Criminally Insane ............................................................................... 126 4.4 Sorokin and Cinema: Moscow ............................................................................. 137 Chapter 5. Restructuring Fantasies .............................................................................................. 144 5.1 Time Warps