Eros of 'Collaboration': Self-Realization of the DP Novel/list (Zhabinsky, Darov, Rzhevsky, Saburova, 1946-1956)

• In Event: Displaced Desires: Writing Sex, Self, and Relation in Exile

Abstract

My paper explores the understudied novelistic corpus of the DP wave of Russian Emigration (1946-1956), where the quest for personal freedom and the new a/Soviet self was often depicted in terms of erotic self-determination: my central questions are why and how were the erotic encounters written so intensely and variously into the anti-Soviet narratives? What were the narrative and stylistic models here? What were the modes of attraction and influence compelling the new emigre writers to engage with various traditions and registers of the erotic representation within the fragile stylistic "zone" between the writing of Socialist Realism and its multiple counterparts in emigration?

Author

• Polina Barskova, UC Berkeley