Introduction: Power in Pelevin1

Abstract

AbstractThis cluster of articles by Sofya Khagi, Tatiana Filimonova, Daniel Taehun Lee, and Maya Vinokour examines the oeuvre of Victor Pelevin over the last three decades, interrogating his relationship with various forms of power. In the introduction, the authors survey recent scholarship on power in Pelevin’s work, positing the primacy of power in his literary project at various points in his writing career. The articles examine Pelevin’s vision of political, personal, social, economic, and spiritual power as expressed through the philosophical‐aesthetic mode of the sublime, Buddhist spirituality, as well as in the contexts of geopolitics, Russian civilizationism, and Anglo‐American Neo‐Reactionary thought. A resonant voice in contemporary Russian prose, Pelevin engages with influential philosophical, political, and aesthetic discourses inside and outside post‐Soviet space—if not deconstructing their power, then at least planting seeds of doubt in his readers’ minds.