Beyond Postmodernism : Russia and Eastern Europe in Search of Their Cultural Identity

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss a remarkable aspect of contemporary Russian and East European literature after the perestroika: fragmentation as a literary device. The preliminary assumption for this approach is that these areas can be, in spite of their diversity, treated productively as a cultural sphere integrated loosely by their common geopolitical experiences. By “fragmentation”I mean the device of structuring novels (and prose works in general) with fragments, not following any consistent development of plot. Although this device is not new to the 20th-century novel, it became particularly conspicuous in the contemporary literary scene of Russia and Eastern Europe in the 1990s. What runs parallel to it is the collapse of monolithic value judgment system which dominated Socialist countries before the perestroika. A dramatic illustration of this is the split of the Writers Union of the USSR and the consequent irreconcilable conflict among various factions of writers. Karen Stepanian maintains that one of the most characteristic aspects of postmodernism in contemporary Russia is the belief that existence consists of arbitrary fragments. It explains clearly why contemporary writers in Russia and Eastern Europe have developed a tendency toward “fragmentation”. In this paper I discussed the following cases as remarkable examples of this tendency: Galkovskii's The Endless Cul-de-sac (1988), Prigov and Moscow Conceptualism, Kabakov's total installation The Palace of Projects (1995-98), Bitov's The Inevitability of the Unwritten (1998), Erofeev's The Encyclopedia of the Russian Soul (1999), Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars (1984), and Esterházy's works. However, in Russia there recently appeared a certain tendency toward what might be considered reintegration of fragments. Works with such a tendency are filled with nationalistic sentiment, aiming after the reacquisition of the superpower that Russia used to possess. Pavel Krusanov's The Bite of the Angel (2000) is typical of such a tendency. Some recent Russian films, such as Nikita Mikhalkov''s The Siberian Barber and Aleksei Balabanov's Brother 2, also come in this category. The tendency from fragmentation to reintegration (from the collapse of the superpower to the return to it) can also be seen in the recent political movement of the group “Idushchie vmeste”. In July of 2002, Vladimir Sorokin, the most outstanding representative of Russian postmodernism, and his publisher Ad Marginem were indicted by “Idushchie vmeste” for “circulation of pornography”. This incident shows the ongoing severe conflict in Russia between the postmodern camp and the anti-postmodern camp.

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沼野充義
東京大学大学院人文社会系

Beyond Postmodernism : Russia and Eastern Europe in Search of Their Cultural Identity

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