Left Perspectives on Narrative I: Literatures as Political Practice and Critique

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The papers gathered in this panel will address a series of questions pertaining to imperial Russian literature’s thematization of, and intervention in, contemporary political practices and discourses. More specifically, our case studies gravitate toward the motifs of uprising and revolution, positioning the literary texts as semantically rich points of intersection in international networks of revolutionary thought and practice. At stake is a set of social and political imaginaries, mediated through trans-national literary traditions, and cathected on the task of social and political liberation. The panel participants will discuss three texts from three distinct conjunctures in imperial Russian history: Radishchev’s Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow (1790), Turgenev’s Fathers and Children (1862) and Stepniak-Kravchinsky’s Tale of a Kopeck (1874). Diverse in their artistic methods and institutional positions, all three of these texts grapple with what they perceive to be revolutionary situations and strive to both represent and intervene in them.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 19th Century

Chair

• Ilya Kliger, New York U

Papers

• Radishchev, Cossacks, and Haiti: Universalizing Peasant Revolution in Russia's Radical Enlightenment - Kirill Ospovat, U of Wisconsin-Madison

• Patrie et Enfants: Turgenev and Bourgeois Revolution - Dominick Lawton, Stanford U

• Toward a Poetics of Agitation Literature: The Case of Stepniak-Kravchinsky’s Skazka o kopeike - Ilya Kliger, New York U

Discussant

• Jennifer Flaherty, Duke U