Original scientific paper
Scientists vs. “earthfuckers”: satirical framing of post-Soviet ideological polarization in V. G. Sorokin's Blue Lard
Ante Baran
; University of Zadar
Abstract
Vladimir G. Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard (1999) is considered as a satirical review of twentieth-century Russian history, primarily of the socio-political situation during the nineteen-nineties, which the writer thematizes within the fictional world of the future. This paper deals with the analysis of satirical composition of the social and ideological reality, which in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union was marked by the gap between liberal and conservative trends. In the anti-utopian world of the future, ideologically opposed sections of society, scientists and “earthfuckers”, are presented in metonymic and metaphorical structures (caricature and grotesque) that the author builds on concepts derived from the geopolitical and post-colonial understanding of Russia: the Russian land and the dichotomies of centre – periphery, East – West. The characters are therefore one-dimensional: scientists represent a caricature of Russian liberals whose behaviour is an overemphasized imitation of social norms from the capitalist West, while devotees of the cult of Mother Earth represent an allusion to the mystical and radical ideology of Alexander Dugin's Eurasianism. The latter is characterized by the grotesque that results from the metaphorical shaping of the subjective reality, which the author enhances with a psychoanalytic interpretation of materialistic ideology (the Oedipus complex) and Bakhtin's interpretation of grotesqueness within the framework of degradation (‘lowering’) and the topographical contrast between the earth and the sky.
Keywords
Vladimir Georgievich Sorokin; Blue Lard; satire; grotesque; caricature; saturation; postcolonial reading; metaphor
Hrčak ID:
309949
URI
Publication date:
20.11.2023.
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