Citizens of the future, subjects of the past : civic identity and aesthetic deviance in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation explores normative and deviant representations of citizenship in Russia, tracing continuities between the Soviet and post-Soviet periods in state-produced models of the proper citizen and deviations therefrom in artistic works. I contend that citizenship in Russia, beyond simply a legal definition, has historically been entangled within an array of state symbols and national myths, with both politics and culture at play. This argument hinges upon the notion of citizenship in the Russian context as an embodied practice, and one that entails a particular relationship to time as an instrument of ideology or propaganda—the radiant future in socialist times and the victorious past under Putin. To trace the evolving role of Russian citizenship, I first consider the symbolic New Soviet Man and Lenin's body in the early Soviet era. Next, in the context of rigidified policy, law, and rhetoric under Brezhnev, I examine disillusionment and deviance in fictional texts by Venedikt Erofeev, Eduard Limonov, and Vladimir Voinovich. The third section examines Putin's rule, marked by legal and biopolitical regulations on citizens' bodies and a mythic construction of history, while in the artistic sphere, corporeal deviance, often involving gender non-normativity and pain or immobilization, has emerged as a means of reclaiming agency and voice, as illustrated in the cases of Petr Pavlensky and Seroe Fioletovoe. Through these examinations of political and aesthetic interpretations of civic identity, this study claims that both Soviet and post-Soviet leaders have used citizenship as a tool for maintaining power, while artistic works that engage an aesthetic of deviance attempt to reclaim civic and cultural belonging through artistic resistance to autocratic practices.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Underwood, Alice Esther |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Degree supervisor | Skakov, Nariman, 1978- |
| Thesis advisor | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Thesis advisor | Skakov, Nariman, 1978- |
| Thesis advisor | McFaul, Michael, 1963- |
| Thesis advisor | Stoner, Kathryn, 1965- |
| Degree committee member | McFaul, Michael, 1963- |
| Degree committee member | Stoner, Kathryn, 1965- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Comparative Literature. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alice E. M. Underwood. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Comparative Literature. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Alice Esther Underwood
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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