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Post-Soviet Literature and the Search for a Russian IdentityEmpire of Empty Signs: Russia’s Unsettling Imitations of “The West”

Post-Soviet Literature and the Search for a Russian Identity: Empire of Empty Signs: Russia’s... [Chapter 4 investigates texts in which uncertainty about Russian identity is connected to a sense of cultural inferiority in relation to “the West.” In prose by Viktor Pelevin and V’iacheslav P’etsukh, Russians’ euphoric post-Soviet embracing of (supposedly) Western lifestyles unleashes profound insecurities. Relying on Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry and drawing parallels with Gogol’s prose, the chapter shows how the main case study, Pelevin’s novel Generation “П” (1999), harks back to nineteenth-century notions about Russian culture’s propensity for sham realities. While being indebted to Jean Baudrillard’s work on simulation, Pelevin investigates, through mechanisms of mimicry, the longstanding Russian intellectual anxiety that the nation has no cultural substance of its own and can thus only borrow, superficially, the signs of modern Western civilization.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Post-Soviet Literature and the Search for a Russian IdentityEmpire of Empty Signs: Russia’s Unsettling Imitations of “The West”

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
ISBN
978-1-137-59672-7
Pages
85 –107
DOI
10.1057/978-1-137-59363-4_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Chapter 4 investigates texts in which uncertainty about Russian identity is connected to a sense of cultural inferiority in relation to “the West.” In prose by Viktor Pelevin and V’iacheslav P’etsukh, Russians’ euphoric post-Soviet embracing of (supposedly) Western lifestyles unleashes profound insecurities. Relying on Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry and drawing parallels with Gogol’s prose, the chapter shows how the main case study, Pelevin’s novel Generation “П” (1999), harks back to nineteenth-century notions about Russian culture’s propensity for sham realities. While being indebted to Jean Baudrillard’s work on simulation, Pelevin investigates, through mechanisms of mimicry, the longstanding Russian intellectual anxiety that the nation has no cultural substance of its own and can thus only borrow, superficially, the signs of modern Western civilization.]

Published: Jun 10, 2016

Keywords: Virtual Reality; Business Elite; Cigarette Brand; Russian Culture; Empty Sign

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