Displaced Desires: Writing Sex, Self, and Relation in Exile

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel brings to light a structuring paradox of twentieth-century Russian émigré literature: while being free from censorship, it inevitably rewards artistic expression that is bound in convention and cliché. In their drive “to preserve and to cherish” classical Russian heritage, émigré authors tend to produce texts that resist aesthetic experimentation. This conservative impulse is put to the test in the writing that explores and explodes one of the most tender zones of human experience—that of sexual intimacy. Proceeding from the assumption that sex writing is not hermetically sealed, the panelists will explore a range of contradictions that belie émigré letters, from their linguistic heterogeneity (the clash of late imperial and Soviet registers) to their capacity to weaponize memory for political and erotic ends. The panelists will cover a range of texts, including Ivan Bunin’s Dark Alleys (1937-44), the "Paris Note" group writing of the feminine abjection, the DP authors’ novels of self-discovery (1946-56), and Eduard Limonov’s It’s Me, Eddie (1979).

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Roman Utkin, Wesleyan U

Papers

• Female Abjection in the Writings of the 'Paris Note' - Catherine Ann Ciepiela, Amherst College

• Limonov's 'It's Me, Eddie' and the Erotics of Exile - Roman Utkin, Wesleyan U

• Desire in the Time of Plague: Ivan Bunin's 'New Decameron' - Leonid Livak, U of Toronto (Canada)

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

Discussant

• Yasha Klots, CUNY Hunter College