Left Perspectives on Method IV: Uneven and Combined Development: Keywords for Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Culture

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel examines the application of the concept of uneven and combined development to the study of Russian literature and culture, with a specific focus on Ernst Bloch’s idea of non-synchronicity. Investigating uses of non-synchronicity in a broad historical perspective, the panel interrogates received concepts of cultural periphery, progress, and alternative modernities. The papers analyse how aesthetics provide imaginary resolutions to uneven and combined development, reanimating the use of Marxist concepts in Slavic Studies.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Daria V. Ezerova, U of Cambridge (UK)

Papers

• Toward a Poetics of Transition: Oblomov, Uneven and Combined - Ilya Kliger, New York U

• The Spatial Practice of the Avant-garde: Ilia Zdanevich 1912-1919 - Harsha Ram, UC Berkeley

• Magical Labor and Industrial Modernity: Non-Synchronicity in the Tales of Pavel Bazhov - Bradley A Gorski, Georgetown U

• Realism and the Boneyard of Progress: Non-Synchronicity in Post-Bolotnaya Cinema - Daria V. Ezerova, U of Cambridge (UK)

Discussant

• Jennifer Flaherty, Duke University