Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia Language, Fiction and Fantasy in Modern Russia
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Per-Arne Bodin is Professor of Slavic Languages at Stockholm University.
Mikhail Suslov is Assistant Professor of Russian History and Politics at University of Copenhagen.
Suslov and Bodin have assembled a comprehensive guide to some very strange (but very fascinating) worlds. Some of them are frightening to visit, but the book’s readers could not be in better hands.
Eliot Borenstein, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University, USA
Speculative fiction does not just imagine the future of Putin’s Russia – one of its primary tasks is to process the traumatic legacy of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Thus it is not a coincidence, or a trick of marketing, that makes speculative fiction of all sorts (utopian, dystopian, science fiction, fantasy, alt-history, horror) the most widely read literature in Russia today. This volume is a much-needed guide to key authors and trends in post-Soviet utopian writing.
Yvonne H. Howell, Professor of Russian and International Studies, University of Richmond, USA
More than 700 ‘utopian’ novels are published in Russia every year. These utopias – meaning here fantasy fiction, science fiction, space operas or alternative history – do not set out merely to titillate; instead they express very real Russian anxieties: be they territorial right-sizing, loss of imperial status or turning into a ‘colony’ of the West.
Contributors to this innovative collection use these narratives to re-examine post-Soviet Russian political culture and identity. Interrogating the intersections of politics, ideologies and fantasies, chapters draw together the highbrow literary mainstream (authors such as Vladimir Sorokin), mass literature for entertainment and individuals who bridge the gap between fiction writers and intellectuals or ideologists (Aleksandr Prokhanov, for example, the editor-in-chief of Russia's far-right newspaper Zavtra). In the process The Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia sheds crucial light onto a variety of debates – including the rise of nationalism, right-wing populism, imperial revanchism, the complicated presence of religion in the public sphere, the function of language – and is important reading for anyone interested in the heightened importance of ideas, myths, alternative histories and conspiracy theories in Russia today.
INTRODUCTION: Per-Arne Bodin and Mikhail Suslov
PART 1
Chapter 1: Alternative Russian Revolution: Viacheslav Rybakov and Kir Bulychev, Go Koshino
Chaper 2: Ressentiment and post-traumatic syndrome in Russian post-Soviet speculative fiction: Two trends, Maria Galina
Chapter 3: Telluro-Cosmic Imperial Utopia and Contemporary Russian Art, Maria Engström
Chapter 4: Lazarus on the Ark: Heterotopias in the Novels of Vladimir Sharov and Evgenii Vodolazkin, Muireann Maguire
PART 2
Chapter 5: Conservative science fiction in contemporary Russian literature and politics, Mikhail Suslov
Chapter 6: Othering Russia: Eduard Limonov’s Retrofuturistic (Anti-) Utopia, Andrei Rogatchevski
Chapter 7: Religio-political utopia by Iana Zavatskaia, Anastasia V. Mitrofanova
Chapter 8: “Respectable Xenophobia:”Science Fiction, Utopia and Conspiracy, Viktor Shnirel’man
PART 3
Chapter 9: Church Slavonic in Russian dystopias and utopias, Per-Arne Bodin
Chapter 10: Contested Utopias: Language Ideologies in Valerii Votrin’s Logoped, Ingunn Lunde
Chapter 11: ‘Londongrad’ as a Linguistic Imaginary: Russophone migrants in the UK in the work of Michael Idov and Andrei Ostalsky, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke
PART 4
Chapter 12: ‘Provinces, Piety, and Promotional Putinism: Mapping Aleksandr Prokhanov’s Counter-Utopian Russia’, Edith W. Clowes
Chapter 13: Parameters of Space-Time and Degrees of (Un)-Freedom: Dmitry Bykov’s ZhD, Sofya Khagi
Chapter 14: The new “norma”: Vladimir Sorokin’s Telluria and post-utopian science fiction, Mark Lipovetsky
AFTERWARD: Back to the Future, Forward to the Past? An Afterword on Explorations in Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Kåre Johan Mjør, Sanna Turoma
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Per-Arne Bodin is Professor of Slavic Languages at Stockholm University.
Mikhail Suslov is Assistant Professor of Russian History and Politics at University of Copenhagen.