"The babbitry of professors' humble abodes": Representation of Everyday Life of the "Positivist Father" in Memoirs of Russian Symbolism

Abstract

The formation of symbolism as an artistic and worldview phenomenon took place in intellectual and cultural opposition to the tradition of Russian academic positivism. In the article positivism and symbolism are viewed as two discourses competing for influence in the Russian intellectual environment, the competition of which often took on the features of a conflict between "fathers and children". One of the ways of " battle for the authority" was the construction of the image of "father-positivist" in memoirs and diary notes by symbolists. The object of the study is the representation of the everyday culture of the conventional "father" in the memoirs of A. Beliy, G. I. Chulkov, V. Y. Brusov, N. Petrovskaya, B. M. Runt and Z. N. Gippius. The subject is those discursive mechanics, through which the representation of otherness and "othering" of such everyday life are achieved. The methodology of the work is built around the optics of the translation turn, which allows us to look at the scenes from the memoirs as "third space", where the battle of discourses unfolds at the expense of representational practices. The novelty of the research is manifested both in drawing attention to this problem and in the development of an actual methodological base. Based on the results of the analysis, the following mechanics of "othering" were identified: unification and generalization, binarity and asymmetry, giving the Other the status of timelessness and non-historicity, the use of pejorative categories, the narrative technique of double representation and concealment. The aim of the fathers "othering" was the construction of personal identity and selfhood, as well as the attempt to define oneself through the constitutive Other.