Eating Siberia: Piotr Dravert’s Materialist Aesthetics

• In Event: Siberian Text of Russian Culture?

Abstract

In 1922, Omsk-based geologist, mineralogist, and meteorologist Piotr Dravert (1879–1945) pioneered the study of "lithophagy"—the practice of consuming minerals as food in both the natural world and human cultures. In addition to his scientific work, Dravert was also a writer who, like the more famous polymaths Mikhail Lomonosov and Novalis, integrated his study of materials into his poetry and prose fiction. Drawing on his scientific and artistic work, this paper examines Dravert’s magical materialist aesthetics. It explores how his conceptualization of Siberia as an organic system both buttressed and critiqued the industrial consumption of minerals in Soviet Siberia.