Conceptual Migrations: Soviet Literary Theory in the Making

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel investigates the transplantation of concepts into the developing field of Soviet literary theory from the 1920s to the 1940s. When certain theoretical notions are translated into another language and philosophical discourse, the newly acquired semantic fields often have far-reaching consequences for the further development of a translated concept. While this new life of concepts is often the object of scholarly attention, the way such concepts shift the problematic of the discourse into which they are introduced is less frequently discussed. This panel focuses precisely on how the acceptance of transplanted concepts produces radical shifts and changes in the host context. Each of the papers pays particular attention to the unanticipated effects of such conceptual transplantations. Kunichika's paper examines the emergence of the concept of World Literature in post-revolutionary literary theory, with specific attention to translation of literatures from the East. Osipova's presentation evaluates Viktor Shklovsky's concept of the "Baroque" against Yuri Olesha’s Envy and Yuri Tynyanov’s Wax Person in an attempt to think through the transformations of historical poetics in the Soviet Union of the early 1930s. Finally, Denischenko's paper considers how Mikhail Bakhtin’s introduction of "reification" and "violence" into his writing of the 1930s and 1940s helps him extend his model of author-hero relations to broader social questions of the human sciences. By placing thinkers like Maxim Gorky, Kornei Chukovsky, Viktor Shklovsky, Gyorgy Lukacs, Tynyanov, and Bakhtin side by side, we investigate the dynamics of conceptual migrations and speculate to what extent such shifts and changes are characteristic of post-revolutionary Soviet thought.

Sub Unit

• Literature: Comparative

Papers

• The End of The Soviet Baroque: Historical Poetics of Olesha’s 'Envy' and Tynianov’s 'The Wax Person' - Anastasiya Osipova, New York U

• Weltliteratur, Mirovaia literatura, World Literature: The Task of Translation and the Literatures of East, 1919-1922 - Michael M. Kunichika, Amherst College

• Beyond Author and Hero: 'Violence' and 'Reification' as Traces of Bakhtin's Social Theory - Irina Denischenko, Columbia U

Discussant

• Thomas Seifrid, U of Southern California