Notes From the Underground, or why were Russian Formalism and Structuralism Resisted by Soviet Non-Marxist Intellectuals?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-4765.rus.2023.216124Keywords:
Structuralism, Theory, Literary theory, Russian formalismAbstract
In this paper I analyze what I call “Soviet resistance to theory”. Based on three brief study cases, I discuss how this resistance was not confined to the West and to the intrinsic exhaustion of the trust in language to secure access to truth. I argue that the specific resistance to Russian Formalism and to Structuralism, one of the most expressive branches of which originated precisely outside Marxist tradition, had its own rationale and a subtle dynamic in the Soviet Union, a society in which theoretical innovation could and did at times display unexpected complicities with the ideological mainstream.
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