The Nonsovereign Subject and Sexual Violence in Contemporary North American and Russian Culture by Irina Sadovina A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Irina Sadovina 2018 The Nonsovereign Subject and Sexual Violence in Contemporary North American and Russian Culture Irina Sadovina Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto 2018 Abstract Through stories about sexual violence, societies confront the condition of nonsovereignty that underlies the reality of suffering, self- and other-inflicted, in the lives of sexed beings. Analyzing theoretical, fictional, and popular media texts, written in the United States, Canada, and Russia from the 1980s to the 2010s, this dissertation formulates a structural approach to narratives about sexual violence and nonsovereignty. This approach avoids naturalizing the opposition between the “progressive” West and “traditional” Russia, enabling more informed discussions of cultural narratives about sexual violence and a more critical use of the discursive tools available for dealing with it. I identify three modes of approaching the problem of sexual violence: reparative, radical and prosaic. These modes shape subject positions and patterns of power relations. Each chapter analyzes the structure of a particular mode, its manifestations in cultural myths and in specific texts, and ultimately, its limitations. Chapter 1 discusses the reparative mode, which aims to heal the subject or the world, and its manifestations: the Western speakout model in Sapphire’s Push (1996) and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak (1999), and the Russian ideal of kenosis in Viktor ii Astafiev’s “Lyudochka” (1989) and Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes (2015). Reparative projects can be totalizing and easily appropriated by neoliberalism and conservative nationalism. The radical mode, discussed in Chapter 2, seeks to avoid appropriation by foregrounding identification with trauma. I analyze its manifestations in North American discourses of feminist and queer negativity and the Russian “literature of evil.” Reading Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl (2011) and Vladimir Sorokin’s Marina’s Thirtieth Love (1987), I argue that the radical mode reinscribes abjection as a source of empowerment and supports identity politics and structures of inequality. Chapter 3 formulates the prosaic mode, which focuses on processes of adaptation and survival without resolution or liberation. Reading Lyudmila Petrushevskaya’s The Time: Night (1992) and Tamara Faith Berger’s Maidenhead (2012), I articulate a prosaic vision of the subject as headquarters for self-maintenance in a world both sustaining and hostile. Understanding the three modes as at once fundamental and mutable, I argue for their critical and pragmatic use in debates about sexual violence. iii Acknowledgments This project was generously supported by the Jackman Humanities Institute, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the University of Toronto. The road to submission has been long and eventful, and I was fortunate to share it with Eva-Lynn Jagoe, my supervisor. I want to thank her for her friendship and high expectations, for being excited about ambitious insights whenever they arose, and for not sparing me when I tried to cut corners. The thesis benefited greatly from the input of my committee. I am grateful for their commitment and care. Ann Komaromi referred me, time and again, to game-changing scholarship in Russian studies that I had somehow missed. Barbara Havercroft encouraged me to attend to the literary texts with much more precision – a task that caused me much anxiety at the time, but made an incomparably better reader. Rebecca Comay’s well-placed comments pushed me to engage deeply with the assumptions behind the project. I thank Eliot Borenstein and Kate Holland for participating in the defense and for asking substantive questions that I cannot stop thinking about. The Centre for Comparative Literature has seen me through all the joys and agonies of graduate school. I would like to thank Bao Nguyen and Aphrodite Gardner for their support in administrative matters and well beyond them. I thank Jill Ross for the many productive meetings and for her engagement with my second chapter. Linda Hutcheon has taken me under her wing in more ways than one, and I am deeply grateful for her mentorship. The friendships and collaborations with my colleagues at the Centre have kept me encouraged, challenged and entertained, and I am thankful for all of them. Over the years, I have found a second academic home at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Donna Orwin’s advice was always timely and wise, and the opportunities she pushed me to pursue were interesting and unexpected. Julia Mikhailova witnessed many a pedagogical crisis while I was finding my footing as a teacher, and rescued me with her endless supply of ideas. Dragana Obradović’s door was always open for me; our hurried lunches in- between seminars were full of insight and joy. iv Much of this thesis was conceived while I was a Junior Fellow at Massey College. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Amela Marin, Hugh Segal, and John Fraser, as well as to the fellow Fellows whose friendships and thoughts have pushed the project forward. The thesis was finished when I was a Graduate Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute, and I want to thank my JHI colleagues, particularly Erag Ramizi, Erin Soros, and Letha Victor, for talking with me about violence and suffering with all the seriousness and humour the subject demands. This thesis is a direct product of the walks and conversations I have had with Anastasiya Astapova, Erin Brosey, Kate Pride Brown, Amy Coté, Élise Couture-Grondin, Andréanne Dion, Nicole Grimaldi, Natasha Hay, Evangeline Holtz, Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard, Julia Lewis, Chloe Brault MacKinnon, Emily Macrae, Rachel Mazzara, Noor Naga, Lindsay Reeve, Sean Seeger, and Fan Wu. Thank you to Anna Balázs and Ana Koncul for the life we have shared in the ruins of empires. To André Forget, for friendship and love. To my family: Elvira and Igor, Anna and Anastasia. I dedicate this thesis to Lidia, and to the memory of Tatiana. v Note on Transliteration and Translation In the transliteration of Russian names and words, I have followed the Library of Congress system without diacritical marks and ligatures, with the exception of commonly used English forms. Translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iv Note on Transliteration and Translation ........................................................................................ vi Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 0.0 Rape Stories .........................................................................................................................1 0.1 Sexual Violence as a Crisis of Subjectivity, Ethics and Politics .........................................7 0.2 Theoretical Background .......................................................................................................9 0.3 The Three Modes ...............................................................................................................12 0.1.1 The Reparative Mode .............................................................................................12 0.1.2 The Radical Mode ..................................................................................................14 0.1.3 The Reparative/Radical Loop ................................................................................15 0.1.4 The Prosaic Mode ..................................................................................................16 0.4 The Comparative Approach ...............................................................................................17 0.5 The Corpus .........................................................................................................................19 0.6 Chapter Outline ..................................................................................................................20 Chapter 1. The Reparative Mode in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, Sapphire’s Push, Viktor Astafiev’s Lyudochka and Guzel’ Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes ..................................22 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................22 1.2 The Reparative Mode .........................................................................................................27 1.2.1 North American Feminism and the Speakout ........................................................27 1.2.2 Russian Feminism ..................................................................................................31 1.2.3 Trauma and the Talking Cure ................................................................................36 1.3 The Reparative Mode in America: Speaking Out and Inclusion .......................................41 1.3.1 Speech and Survival in Speak ................................................................................41