Ilya Kliger, Ph.D.

Arbeitsvorhaben

Making the State Visible: The Poetics and Politics of Russian Realism

The task of this book-length project is to present 19th-century Russian realist fiction as a challenge to the prevalent critical assumptions - developed predominantly with reference to the British and French novelistic traditions - about the formal and ideological constitution of the modern novel. Specifically, while much of the existing theoretical work on the novel assumes that it owes its basic social-imaginary architecture to its involvement in the institutions, practices, and ideologemes of bourgeois civil society, I will ask what happens to the novel form (and to realist fiction more broadly) when its fundamental socio-historical orientation is, as in the Russian case, toward the political authority of the state. Given its central problematic, the project draws on three distinct theoretical paradigms: work in political theory pertaining to the concepts of sovereignty and representational scenarios of power; recent socio-politically inflected theory of the novel; and Historical Poetics, which includes, but is not limited to, the field of "world literature studies" as a paradigm of inquiry into the historical, geo-cultural and geopolitical circulation of literary forms. Relying on these critical traditions, I propose a political poetics of Russian realist fiction based on a broad range of texts from the 1830s-'70s.

Recommended Reading

Kliger, Ilya. "Hegel's Political Philosophy and the Social Imaginary of Early Russian Realism." Studies in East European Thought 65, no. 3-4 (2013): 189-199. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-014-9188-z.
-. "Historical Poetics between Russia and the West: Toward a Nonlinear Model of Literary History and Social Ontology." Poetics Today 38, no. 3 (2017): 453-483. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-4166659.
-. "Scenarios of Power in Turgenev's First Love: Russian Realism and the Allegory of the State." Comparative Literature 70, no. 1 (2018): 25-45. https://doi.org/10.1215/00104124-4344056.

Kolloquium, 01.03.2022

Den Staat sichtbar machen: Das gesellschaftliche Imaginäre im Russischen Realismus

In meinem Vortrag konzentriere ich mich auf eine Fallstudie – die begrifflichen und literarischen Ur-sprünge des Russischen Realismus in den 1840ern –, um zwei umfassendere und miteinander ver-bundene Fragen aufzuwerfen. Die erste kann folgendermaßen formuliert werden: Was (wenn überhaupt etwas) gewinnt man, wenn man den Begriff des „gesellschaftlichen Imaginären“ in die Erörterung literarischer und philosophischer Texte einführt oder – allgemeiner – anderer Akte der Bedeutungsproduktion? Die zweite Frage ist eine Präzisierung der ersten: Kann ein solcher Begriff dazu beitragen, die Beziehung zwischen literarischen (oder wieder allgemeiner formuliert: symbolischen) Formen und den historischen Schauplätzen zu verstehen, an denen sie entstehen und gedeihen? Die Hinweise, die uns helfen könnten, diese Fragen anzugehen, sind verborgen in der bizarren, traumartigen Welt, in der Dostojewski höfische Oden verfasste, Hegel ein bahnbrechender Erzähler war und man denen den Handschlag verweigerte, die die deutsche Philosophie nicht verstanden. Ich hoffe, dass ich die Zuhörerinnen und Zuhörer sicher auf die andere Seite geleiten kann.

Publikationen aus der Fellowbibliothek

Kliger, Ilya (Chicago, 2024)

Sovereign fictions : poetics and politics in the age of Russian realism Poetics and politics in the age of Russian realism

Kliger, Ilya (Moskva, 2020)

Russkij realizm XIX veka : obščestvo, znanie, povestvovanie : sbornik statej Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie

Kliger, Ilya (Durham, NC, 2018)

Scenarios of power in Turgenev's First Love : Russian realism and the allegory of the state

Kliger, Ilya (2017)

Historical poetics between Russia and the West : toward a nonlinear model of literary history and social ontology

Kliger, Ilya (Durham, NC, 2017)

Historical poetics in theory Poetics today ; volume 38, number 3

Kliger, Ilya (Durham, NC, 2017)

Historical poetics between Russia and the West : toward a nonlinear model of literary history and social ontology

Kliger, Ilya (2016)

On "genre memory" in Bakhtin

Kliger, Ilya (2016)

Introducing historical poetics : history, experience, form

Kliger, Ilya (New York, 2016)

Persistent forms : explorations in historical poetics Verbal arts: studies in poetics

Kliger, Ilya (Dordrecht [u.a.], 2013)

Hegel's political philosophy and the social imaginary of early Russian realism