Socialist Realism without Shores

Socialist Realism without Shores

  • Auteur: Lahusen, Thomas; Dobrenko, Evgeny
  • Éditeur: Duke University Press
  • Collection: Post-Contemporary Interventions
  • ISBN: 9780822319351
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822398097
  • Lieu de publication:  Durham , United States
  • Année de publication électronique: 1997
  • Mois : Avril
  • Pages: 376
  • DDC: 700/.947/0904
  • Langue: Anglais
Socialist Realism without Shores offers an international perspective on the aesthetics of socialist realism—an aesthetic that, contrary to expectations, survived the death of its originators and the demise of its original domain. This expanded edition of a special issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly brings together scholars from various parts of the globe to discuss socialist realism as it appears across genres in art, architecture, film, and literature and across geographic divides—from the "center," Russia, to various points at the "periphery"—China, Germany, France, Poland, remote republics of the former USSR, and the United States.
The contributors here argue that socialist realism has never been a monolithic art form. Essays demonstrate, among other things, that its literature could accommodate psychoanalytic criticism; that its art and architecture could affect the aesthetic dictates of Moscow that made "Soviet" art paradoxically heterogeneous; and that its aesthetics could accommodate both high art and crafted kitsch. Socialist Realism without Shores also addresses the critical discourse provoked by socialist realism—Stalinist aesthetics, "anthropological" readings; ideology critique and censorship; and the sublimely ironic approaches adapted from sots art, the Soviet version of postmodernism.

Contributors. Antoine Baudin, Svetlana Boym, Greg Castillo, Katerina Clark, Evgeny Dobrenko, Boris Groys, Hans Günther, Julia Hell, Leonid Heller, Mikhail Iampolski, Thomas Lahusen, Régine Robin, Yuri Slezkine, Lily Wiatrowski Phillips, Xudong Zhang, Sergei Zimovets


  • Contents
  • Introduction - Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko
  • Socialist Realism in Search of Its Shores: Some Historical Remarks on the "Historically Open Aesthetic System of the Truthful Representation of Life" - Thomas Lahusen
  • Socialist Realism with Shores: The Conventions for the Positive Hero - Katerina Clark
  • A World of Prettiness: Socialist Realism and Its Aesthetic Categories - Leonid Heller
  • A Style and a Half: Socialist Realism between Modernism and Postmodernism - Boris Groys
  • Peoples at an Exhibition: Soviet Architecture and the National Question - Greg Castillo
  • Paradoxes of Unified Culture: From Stalin's Fairy Tale to Molotov's Lacquer Box - Svetlana Boym
  • The Disaster of Middlebrow Taste, or, Who "Invented" Socialist Realism? - Evgeny Dobrenko
  • Censorship as the Triumph of Life - Mikhail Iampolski
  • Wise Father Stalin and His Family in Soviet Cinema - Hans Günther
  • Son of the Regiment: Deus ex Machina - Sergei Zimovets
  • Soft-Porn, Kitsch, and Post-Fascist Bodies: The East German Novel of Arrival - Julia Hell
  • "Why is Soviet Painting Hidden from Us?" Zhdanov Art and Its International Relations and Fallout, 1947-53 - Antoine Baudin
  • W. E. B. Du Bois and Soviet Communism: The Black Flame as Socialist Realism - Lily Wiatrowski Phillips
  • The Power of Rewriting: Postrevolutionary Discourse on Chinese Socialist Realism - Xudong Zhang
  • Primitive Communism and the Other Way Around - Yuri Slezkine
  • The Past as a Dustbin, or, The Phantoms of Socialist Realism - Régine Robin
  • Index
  • Notes on Contributors

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

By subscribing, you accept our Privacy Policy