Alternative kinships : economy and family in Russian modernism / Jacob Emery.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Emery, Jacob, 1977- author.

Series:

NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bely, Andrey, 1880-1934. Peterburg.

Bely, Andrey.

Families in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (193 pages)

Place of Publication:

DeKalb, Illinois : NIU Press, [2017]

Summary:

According to Marx, the family is the primal scene of the division of labor and the "germ" of every exploitative practice. In this insightful study, Jacob Emery examines the Soviet Union's programmatic effort to institute a global siblinghood of the proletariat, revealing how alternative kinships motivate different economic relations and make possible other artistic forms. A time in which literary fiction was continuous with the social fictions that organize the social economy, the early Soviet period magnifies the interaction between the literary imagination and the reproduction of labor onto a historical scale. Narratives dating back to the ancient world feature scenes in which a child looks into a mirror and sees someone else reflected there, typically a parent. In such scenes, two definitions of the aesthetic coincide: art as a fantastic space that shows an alternate reality and art as a mirror that reflects the world as it is. In early Soviet literature, mirror scenes illuminate the intersection of imagination and economy, yielding new relations destined to replace biological kinship—relations based in food, language, or spirit. These metaphorical kinships have explanatory force far beyond their context, providing a vantage point onto, for example, the Gothic literature of the early United States and the science fiction discourses of the postwar period. Alternative Kinships will appeal to scholars of Russian literature, comparative literature, and literary theory, as well as those interested in reconciling formalist and materialist approaches to culture.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One: A Universe Akin

Chapter Two: A World of Mirrors

Chapter Three: Haunted Households

Chapter Four: The Land of Milk and Money

Afterword: Stock Exchanges

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781501756726

1501756729

9781609092108

1609092104