Russian Postmodernism

This course will focus on Russian postmodern literature from the 1960s to the present. We will explore the extent to which its themes and experimental stylistic techniques unmask the sense of fragmentation, disorientation and instability that characterize late 20th-century and contemporary Russia. The fictions studied (including film) offer parodies of philosophical and ideological discourses; reveal an obsession with bodily functions, sexuality, and violence; and playfully reinterpret the grand "metanarratives" of Russian culture. We will relate these trends in Russian fiction to broader discourses of the postmodern in the West. Authors include: Bitov, Erofeev, Limonov, Sorokin, Pelevin, Kabakov, Petrushevskaya, Tolstaya.