“The Pornographic Literature” of V. Sorokin in the Clutches of Russian Cultural Memory (Or, How It Is Impossible to Escape Your Own History)

Abstract

The study concerns one of the most controversial Russian authors, the enfant terrible of modern Russian literature and culture, Vladimir Sorokin. Its purpose is clear from the beginning: to answer the question as to why his books, often referred to as “pornographic”, have yet to become the subject of “academic” debate in Russia, when in Western Europe his creativity has instigated research by many internationally renowned authorities. – The study attempts to show that this disparity in the reception of Sorokin’s work is the result of a special attitude towards language in Russian culture: in various periods of cultural history, “the love of words” led to equating language with reality. – Also, in the Soviet Union, language as a means of building reality brought about utopian, mythical visions, where the boundary between the signifier and the signified became blurred. An individual or collective vision – regardless of its utopianism – changes into reality. – A Russian individual, grown used to the incessant masking of reality, not only observes the Soviet model being discredited, but also witnesses the deliberate demolition of the institution of the language itself. The responses to Sorokin’s creativity show that the Russian reader anxiously resists the destruction, as if attempting to remain within the world of a familiar linguistic reality. – The study also points to another aspect of Russian cultural awareness exposed by Sorokin: that the Russian fatal dependency on the language is intertwined with a dependency on “the body”. The interconnection between physical actuality (the body) and the language model brings about an ambivalence in the Russian culture, which is becoming a constant in its development. – The analysis of actual texts shows how Sorokin attempts to overcome this ambivalence. As it turns out, the writer himself also falls “victim” to historical memory.