‘Night’s as murky as the skies’. ‘The literary today’ and history of literature as discursive problems

Abstract

The article explores the principal new situation that has emerged in the ‘literary field’ (P. Bourdieu). The authors suggest that, in their discussions, literary scholars have largely overlooked persistent ideological and discursive conflicts as well as the figure of a ‘Kulturträger’ scholar of the humanities as such. The entire field is experiencing an implacable discursive conflict: having global origins, it poses a challenge to national histories, including histories of literature. The discursive and civic creed of the liberal scholarly and artistic elite developed for fifty years, its current makeup defined by complete rejection of the concept of ‘Russia’ and the Russian intelligentsia’s entire traditional legacy, including the core concept of ‘narod’ (common people). The authors argue that fascination with the Western liberal political discourse, when it reaches the intensity of a ‘political religion,’ combined with total alienation from all things national, spells self-inflicted doom for those elites and renders any dialogue impossible, while the prevalence of political consciousness within the ‘framework rules’ of the literary domain bankrupts culture.