Rubins Maria (ed.) Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020

London: UCL Press, 2021. — 278 p. — ISBN-10: 1787359425; ISBN-13: 978-1787359420.Over the century that has passed since the start of the massive post-revolutionary exodus, Russian literature has thrived in multiple locations around the globe. What happens to cultural vocabularies, politics of identity, literary canon and language when writers transcend the metropolitan and national boundaries and begin to negotiate new experience gained in the process of migration?Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 sets a new agenda for the study of Russian diaspora writing, countering its conventional reception as a subsidiary branch of national literature and reorienting the field from an excessive emphasis on the homeland and origins to an analysis of transnational circulations that shape extraterritorial cultural practices. Integrating a variety of conceptual perspectives, ranging from diaspora and postcolonial studies to the theories of translation and self-translation, World Literature and evolutionary literary criticism, the contributors argue for a distinct nature of diasporic literary expression predicated on hybridity, ambivalence and a sense of multiple belonging. As the complementary case studies demonstrate, diaspora narratives consistently recode historical memory, contest the mainstream discourses of Russianness, rewrite received cultural tropes and explore topics that have remained marginal or taboo in the homeland. These diverse discussions are framed by a focused examination of diaspora as a methodological perspective and its relevance for the modern human condition.Conceptual territories of ‘diaspora’: introductionThe unbearable lightness of being a diasporian: modes of writing and reading narratives of displacement. Maria Rubins‘Quest for significance’: performing diasporic Identities in transnational contextsExile as emotional, moral and ideological ambivalence: Nikolai Turgenev and the performance of political exile. Andreas Schonle
Rewriting the Russian literary tradition of prophecy in the diaspora: Bunin, Nabokov and Viacheslav Ivanov. Pamela DavidsonEvolutionary trajectories: adaptation, ‘Interbreeding’ and transcultural polyglossyaTranslingual poetry and the boundaries of diaspora: the self-translations of Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky. Adrian Wanner
5. Evolutionary biology and ‘writing the diaspora’: the cases of Theodosius Dobzhansky and Vladimir Nabokov. David BetheaImagined spaces of unity and differenceRepatriation of diasporic literature and the role of the poetry anthology in the construction of a diasporic canon. Katharine Hodgson
Is there room for diaspora literature in the internet age? Mark Lipovetsky
The benefits of distance: extraterritoriality as cultural capital in the literary marketplace. Kevin M. F. PlattBeyond diaspora? Brief remarks in lieu of an afterword. Galin TihanovConclusion. Maria Rubins