Northwestern University Press Research Articles

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies, Objects, Archives By Paola S. Hernández. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2022; pp. viii + 219, 13 illustrations. $99.95 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book.

Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies, Objects, Archives By Paola S. Hernández. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2022; pp. viii + 219, 13 illustrations. $34.95 e-book. - Volume 64 Issue 1

Kata Gellen, Kafka and Noise. The Discovery of Cinematic Sound in Literary Modernism. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL 2019. 252 S., € 34,09.

Article Kata Gellen, Kafka and Noise. The Discovery of Cinematic Sound in Literary Modernism. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL 2019. 252 S., € 34,09. was published on December 1, 2022 in the journal Arbitrium (volume 40, issue 3).

Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Moral Acts by Dana Dragunoiu

Reviewed by: Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Moral Acts by Dana Dragunoiu Anna Maslenova Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Moral Acts. By Dana Dragunoiu. (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 2021. xxi+264 pp. £73. ISBN 978–0–8101–4399–9. Dana Dragunoiu’s book is a valuable contribution to the study of Vladimir Nabokov’s ethics, reaffirming his Kantian view that the courteous treatment of others is a moral act. This book examines what its author terms ‘Nabokov’s faith in freedom’ (p. 4): the fact that Nabokov’s fictional characters are free to decide whether to conform to social standards or indulge their own passions. Dragunoiu argues that courteous gestures pertain to an anti-consequentialist moral paradigm, since they do not entail self-interest or personal gain. Her study thus shows how a critical focus on courtesy unites the ethical and aesthetic aspects of Nabokov’s texts. Taking literally Nabokov’s well-known dictum that ‘style is matter’, Dragunoiu claims that ‘Nabokov’s ethics is, startingly, an aesthetics’ and that his characters perform, or refuse to perform, ‘the art of moral acts’ (p. 12, emphasis original). Her monograph is arranged in six chapters and an Epilogue, offering a broad survey of Nabokov’s intertextual exchanges with Pushkin, Shakespeare, Tolstoi, and Proust on the subject of courtesy. Dragunoiu successively examines Nabokovian courtesy as performed by Mrs Luzhin (The Luzhin Defence), Helen Grinstein (The Real Life of Sebastian Knight), Disa (Pale Fire), and Lucette (Ada). She analyses Mrs Luzhin’s attempt to comfort an unnamed Soviet lady, Helen Grinstein’s welcoming response to V’s visit in the middle of a funeral ceremony for her brother-in-law, Disa’s adherence to etiquette despite her grief over her husband Charles Xavier’s infidelities, and Lucette’s parting words to the Robinsons immediately before her suicide. In these cases, a heroine’s courteous behaviour serves to illustrate her virtue. Conversely, Dragunoiu also shows how discourteous behaviour indicates the moral limitations of more boorish characters such as Ganin (in Nabokov’s debut novel Mary), Pete Dean and John Shade who refuse to recognize Hazel’s individuality (Pale Fire), and Van from Ada, who falls short of the narrator’s gentlemanly and aesthetic standards. The sixth chapter is the most interesting but also the most problematic. It explores courtesy in Lolita and Pnin, considered by Dragunoiu Nabokov’s darkest novels because they reveal his loss of faith in the moral dimension of courtesy and even of art in general. Pnin does not perform his moral duty of remembering Mira Belochkin, murdered in a concentration camp. He suppresses his memories of her because his own existence is untenable in any world where crimes such as her murder can happen. In Lolita, courtesy serves to normalize the unthinkable: rape and child abuse. Humbert’s narratorial eloquence ‘underscores the functional equivalence between art and courtesy’ (p. 157). Both texts contain a ‘Holocaust subtext’ (p. 158) and resonate with Adorno’s celebrated statement that writing poetry after Auschwitz is ‘barbaric’ (cited on p. 178). Dragunoiu suggests, however, that in subsequent years ‘the memory of children burned in ovens receded from Nabokov’s imagination’ (p. 193). Thus, in Ada he reverts to his former conception of courteous gestures as moral, evident from that novel’s references to the medieval romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. One might well wonder how and whether Nabokov succeeded [End Page 736] in forgetting these terrible images. Perhaps, like Pnin, he learnt to suppress the recollection of tragedy. Dragunoiu does not offer any explanation. This study provides an extensive collection of the various expressions of courtesy in Nabokov’s novels. It would have been still more interesting if it had offered more detailed analysis of how courtesy works in a single Nabokov text, at different levels. For instance, scholars could explore whether Luzhin’s lack of courtesy—before Mrs Luzhin teaches him to kiss women’s hands—might be an expression of his moral deficiency. There are many more instances of potential interrelation between courtesy and morality in Nabokov’s fiction. [End Page 737] Anna Maslenova University of Exeter Copyright © 2022 The Modern...

Review: Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities, edited by Erina Duganne and Abigail Satinsky

Review: <i>Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities</i>, edited by Erina Duganne and Abigail Satinsky

The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin by Carol Any

Reviewed by: The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin by Carol Any Polly Jones Any, Carol. The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2020. xiv + 318 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $120.00; $39.95. The Soviet Writers' Union was the main institution of Soviet literature from the early 1930s to the regime's collapse. Membership granted considerable privileges and imposed heavy obligations; it was one of the main determinants of Soviet-era writers' economic and political status. Despite its central role in twentieth-century literary history, however, the union has received scant scholarly attention in its own right. It is well-known that Writers' Union decision-making had decisive impacts on many authors' lives, and there now exist substantial collections of union archive documents, but analyses of the union's institutional history remain thin on the ground. John and Carol Garrard's classic study, which could draw on only limited Russian sources and focused more on writers' experiences than the union's organizational history, has until recently been the standard work in English. A handful of studies have [End Page 753] also appeared more recently in Russian, including excellent research on the litfond and union-run writers' accommodation. Carol Any's thorough history of the union, based on a huge amount of Soviet archive material, therefore represents a major step forward in our understanding of the institutional and political history of Soviet literature. Firstly, it offers by far the most detailed and nuanced account of the emergence of Stalinist literary culture to date (its final chapter offers a briefer overview of post-Stalinist developments). Much of the first half of the book is devoted to a detailed reconstruction of the union's emergence from the gruppovshchina of the 1920s and its institutionalization and organization in the 1930s. Any proves more conclusively than previous studies that the union was initially and widely preferred to proletarian literary organizations, because writers and leaders considered it more tolerant and less politicized. However, hopes for an inclusive, diverse Soviet literature were soon scuppered by the clear (though not always clearly articulated) desire of the party elite to control writers: aesthetically, politically, and in almost every other aspect of their lives. Particularly interesting is the rich account of Maksim Gor´kii's disillusionment with this direction of travel in the early 1930s, even as he still appeared to wield substantial influence over Soviet literature, Socialist Realism and the union itself. Despite their collaboration on creating the union and the state aesthetic doctrine, Gor´kii and Stalin were at odds almost from the start, and it was Stalin's (and the Politburo's) vision of literary controls that won out early on. This desire for control would continue to shape all key decisions on union personnel and policy, which are shown here as even more top-down than previously thought. Alongside this persuasive recasting of Gor´kii's role, the book also devotes unprecedented attention to other leading figures in the organization who have been strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) overlooked: Ivan Gronskii, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, Vladimir Ermilov and Vladimir Stavskii. Comparing them with the better-known union leader Aleksandr Fadeev, and drawing on a wide range of little-known personal and institutional sources, Any explores their intrigues and in-fighting as they led the union through Stalinist Terror, war and recurrent ideological campaigns. While these stories of union politics are richly fascinating, the conclusions drawn from them seem more familiar. Stalinist literary politics appears as a 'force-field' of top-down political pressures where even (or especially) union heads had 'limited agency'. At the same time, these bosses had to manoeuvre constantly to stay in the good graces of the party leadership and within the 'honour group' of the Soviet literary world. The overwhelming need to profess political loyalty entailed repeated betrayals of previously (and often sincerely) held positions on writers and their works, and literary policy. While these contradictory stances were illogical, the [End Page 754] literary system possessed and reproduced a distinct behavioural logic. As Any contends, such behaviour proved morally and...

Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief by Lindsay Brandon Hunter

Reviewed by: Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief by Lindsay Brandon Hunter E. B. Hunter Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. By Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021; pp. 192. As W. B. Worthen notes in his recent project to map the technicity of theatre, a great deal of contemporary scholarship tends to represent theatre "as engaged in a conflictual accommodation with the succession of performance-recording media: theatre/film, theatre/TV, theatre/digital media,"1 a characterization that does not reflect the inherent intermediality of theatrical practice. Although Worthen's project does not, of course, involve an analysis of campus politics, it is worth noting that the scholarly dichotomies he marks as erroneous could also describe the separations between departments of representational media on a great deal of campuses. In other words, courtesy appointments and exceptions aside, at the level of faculty, budget, and building allocation, theatre in academia has more often mirrored the dichotomies that characterize its scholarship than it has the intermediality of its practice. However, reorganization across these separations is becoming more common for degrees from BA/BFA through the PhD. Most recently, in 2021, UC Santa Cruz's Department of Theater Arts merged with the university's Art and Design: Games and Playable Media Program to become the Department of Performance, Play, and Design. And in 2020, Ohio State University combined its Department of Theatre with an interdisciplinary Film Studies program and a major in Moving-Image Production to become the Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts. A book review cannot outline the potential downsides, positive impacts, or unique circumstances that might attend such mergers. However, what can be accomplished here is a focus on one example of how the intermedial lines of inquiry likely to arise from these departmental reorganizations can manifest at the level of the field's key currency: the solo-authored monograph. Released in 2021 from Northwestern University Press, Lindsay Brandon Hunter's Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief illustrates how scholarship can thrive when theatre is considered with a broadly crossdisciplinary perspective. Given the aims and scope of Theatre Topics and the recent publication of other reviews that capably cover the book's core theoretical interventions,2 this review takes the opportunity to focus on how Playing Real might function pedagogically amid the field's recent departmental mergers. Playing Real draws together a wide spectrum of case studies, with chapters ranging from digitized conventional [End Page 112] theatre to born-digital contexts that Hunter marks as resoundingly theatricalized. Chapter 1 considers the 1964 Burton/Gielgud Electronovision Hamlet, as well as mid-2010s broadcasts from the National Theatre's NT Live and Royal Shakespeare Company's Live from Stratford-upon-Avon. Chapter 2 revisits the Electronovision Hamlet through an analysis of its legendary 2007 "reanimation" by the Wooster Group. The book then shifts from the theatrical to the theatricalized, with two chapters on various reality TV shows—those "mash-up[s] of artificial construction and supposedly authentic, spontaneous affect" (xxi). And Chapter 5 turns to alternate reality games (ARGs), which Hunter explains are "conducted across multiple media platforms . . . and employ real-world digital and material objects as artifacts that serve the games and their fantastic scenarios" (xxii). What ties together these disparate contexts, Hunter argues, is that each "has been decried as imperiling the real by setting up camp in a murky area in which the boundaries separating actual from virtual, genuine from artificial, and truth from fiction are difficult to discern" (xv). It is in this "double artificiality of theatricality rendered through representational media" that she finds "a fertile site for productive and pleasurable mischief, including the playful reconfiguring of audience and participant relationships to qualities like sincerity, honesty, and genuineness" (ibid.). Graduate seminars or faculty reading groups might find in Playing Real a demonstration of situating seemingly far-flung case studies in one's home field and using the technical and theoretical vocabulary of that field to craft one overarching argument. In an undergraduate course, the book's inclusion of contemporary, populist case studies like reality TV and ARGs would invite students across majors—perhaps in a newly merged department—to think under the umbrella...

Institutional Theatrics: Performing Arts Policy in Post-Wall Berlin. By Brandon Woolf. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021; 268 pp.; illustrations. $99.95 cloth, $34.95 paper, e-book available. - Theatre of Anger: Radical Transnational Performance in Contemporary Berlin. By Olivia Landry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021; 236 pp.; illustrations. $56.25 cloth, e-book available.

Institutional Theatrics: Performing Arts Policy in Post-Wall Berlin. By Brandon Woolf. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021; 268 pp.; illustrations. 34.95 paper, e-book available. - Theatre of Anger: Radical Transnational Performance in Contemporary Berlin. By Olivia Landry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021; 236 pp.; illustrations. $56.25 cloth, e-book available. - Volume 66 Issue 2

Theatremachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context ed. by Magda Romanska and Kathleen Cioffi

Reviewed by: Theatremachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context ed. by Magda Romanska and Kathleen Cioffi Mischa Twitchin THEATREMACHINE: TADEUSZ KANTOR IN CONTEXT. Edited by Magda Romanska and Kathleen Cioffi. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2020; pp. 342. After more than thirty years now since his death, the ambition of this collection of essays (in the words of one its coeditors) is "to reframe and reexamine Kantor's work in the critical context of contemporary theory and aesthetics, while reclaiming the critical and formal opportunities it offers" (xvi). One might pause to reflect on this "while," as it suggests an interesting caveat concerning the relation between the two aims—not least, with respect to a "critical" understanding of "context" in the book itself. What kinds of questions, after all, might the singularity of Kantor's work still provoke, not least as concerns the context of theatre studies? Although the tension between the critical and the aesthetic is perhaps endemic in theatre research, it becomes especially noticeable in light not only of Kantor's lifelong polemics but, more crucially, of the artistic and conceptual commitments that underlie them. Distinct from exploring Kantor's own sense of "context" (such as he attempted to define it himself in his manifestos and in his archive project, the Cricoteka), many of the essays here seem to want, rather, to apply some moral to Kantor's work—or draw one from it—whether this concerns, for example, art "after Auschwitz," ideas of the post-human, post-memory, or the Anthropocene. In this respect, the collection interestingly invites reflection on aspects of Kantor's reception today, of which it offers an important example of its own. The scope of the "contexts" in which Kantor's work is read here is indicated by the three editorial headings under which the essays are grouped: "in theory," "locally" (that is, in relation to Poland specifically, including its Jewish cultural legacies), and "globally." Besides new essays from scholars such as Hans-Thies Lehmann (addressing Kantor in respect of "post-dramatic tragedy") and Michal Kobialka (exploring the reality of "objects" in Kantor's theatre, distinct from the conventions of "props"), as well as valuable essays by each of the editors themselves, the collection includes translations of essays by many Polish researchers, which makes for a particular recommendation of the editors' work. Among these, Grzegorz Niziolek, for instance, evokes a sense of the "obscene" (48) in the relation (the "scandalous collision" [45]) between Kantor's theatre and history, specifically the Holocaust, within the postwar Polish context. Another key to the collection is the editors' invitation to their contributors to put Kantor into relation with other theatre artists, including (among others) Bausch, Tanguy, Perceval, and the Wooster Group, to propose international connections through which to consider his work anew. Insights are derived from attention to cultural contexts here, with Izumi Ashizawa's essay on "Kantor and Japan," for example, reflecting on the difference between the onstage role of the assistant in Noh theatre (koken), as distinct from the supporting character (waki) that Georges Banu famously suggested as a point of comparison for Kantor (233); and from Kris Salata's examination of the key notion of a "poor theatre" in an essay reviewing what is lost in the English translation of a distinction in Polish between biedny (in Kantor's use) and ubogi (in Grotowski's) (157). With respect to the context of theatre studies itself, however, it is interesting how rare are the moments where different essays offer, precisely, different (still less contradictory) refractions of the very question of "Kantor in context"—where the use of the singular in the book's subtitle (rather than "contexts") is perhaps already indicative. The sense that, as Katarzyna Fazan notes, "Kantor's actions provoke ambiguous interpretations" (190) is barely explored, and only the essay by Anna Burzynska offers the explicit caveat "that there is actually no such thing as one 'theatre of Tadeusz Kantor,' an easily defined, unchanging monolith" (255). While, no doubt, all of the contributors would agree with this, such awareness is belied by the recurring assertion of themes, often caught up in a critical will to identify "influences," whether that of Kantor on others or, more...

Absolutist Attachments: Emotion, Media, and Absolutism in Seventeenth-Century France. By Chloé Hogg. Rethinking the Early Modern. Edited by Marcus Keller, Ellen McClure, and Feisal Mohamed. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. xii+276. $99.95 (cloth); $34.95 (paper and e-book).

<i>Absolutist Attachments: Emotion, Media, and Absolutism in Seventeenth-Century France</i>. By Chloé Hogg. Rethinking the Early Modern. Edited by Marcus Keller, Ellen McClure, and Feisal Mohamed. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. xii+276. $99.95 (cloth); $34.95 (paper and e-book).

Lindsey Stewart. The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-abolitionism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Pp. 216. $99.95 (cloth); $34.95 (paper).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsLindsey Stewart. The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-abolitionism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Pp. 216. $99.95 (cloth); $34.95 (paper).Deborah G. PlantDeborah G. PlantTampa, FL Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Political Thought Volume 11, Number 3Summer 2022 Published in association with the American Political Thought organized section of the American Political Science Association and the Jack Miller Center Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/720686 Views: 44Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Institutional Theatrics: Performing Arts Policy in Post-Wall Berlin By Brandon Woolf. Performance Works. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021; pp. xii + 268, 24 illustrations. $99.95 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book.

Institutional Theatrics: Performing Arts Policy in Post-Wall Berlin By Brandon Woolf. Performance Works. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021; pp. xii + 268, 24 illustrations. $34.95 e-book. - Volume 63 Issue 2

Pelevin and Unfreedom: Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics by Sofya Khagi

Reviewed by: Pelevin and Unfreedom: Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics by Sofya Khagi Sarah Gear Pelevin and Unfreedom: Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics. By Sofya Khagi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 2021. xi+284 pp. $39.95; £36.50. ISBN 978-0-81014-302-9. In her detailed consideration of Victor Pelevin's literary output, from his short story 'Hermit and Six Toes' (1990) to his novel iPhuck 10 (2017), Sofya Khagi examines the techniques and theoretical preoccupations of a writer who 'likes to think' (p. 216). Khagi argues convincingly that Pelevin deserves scholarly attention. Whether one reads him in post-Soviet Russia, or in the contemporary West, Pelevin's damning observations about capitalism, consumerism, technology, and our resulting unfreedom are relevant to us all. Khagi's excellent Introduction shows how Pelevin's philosophical concerns and opinions about contemporary society are grounded in the theories of Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, Herbert Marcuse, and Michel Foucault, which she discusses throughout this study. Her first two chapters analyse Pelevin's indictment, in his seminal Generation P (1999), of the consumerism unleashed in 1990s Russia. Chapter 1 situates the same novel alongside other dystopian fiction, drawing comparisons with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, and Evgenii Zamiatin's We, while Chapter 2 scrutinizes what Khagi terms Pelevin's 'language politics' (p. 49): deliberate disruption of Russian literary language in order to intensify his critique of modern society. Using the central protagonist Tatarskii's advertising slogans as key examples of such subversive linguistic techniques, Khagi makes the case that this experimental use of language embodies Pelevin's beliefs about the degradation of contemporary society. The remaining six chapters build on concerns raised in Generation P to cover related themes in a wide-ranging selection of Pelevin's later works. Empire V (2006), according to Khagi, is concerned with biopolitics and with humanity as a biomass commodity exploited by vampires; Helmet of Horror (2005) and Pineapple Water for the Beautiful Lady (2010) deal with Pelevin's concerns about dehumanization, while illustrating his eschatological views with biblical and apocalyptic imagery. In the last two novels, the most likely outcome is an 'apocalypse of entropy' (p. 121). Chapter 6 follows Pelevin's exploration and exhaustion of the trope of alternative history; tracing intertextual references to predecessors, such as Boris and Arkadii Strugatskii and Dostoevskii, occupies Chapter 7. Finally, Khagi considers Pelevin's multifaceted use of irony throughout his texts, applied as much to his authorial persona as to the world he depicts. It is through irony, she contends, that Pelevin successfully introduces a sliver of hope into his predominantly hope-less texts. More broadly, Khagi traces the arc of Pelevin's thematic development: from preoccupation with Soviet ideology to the new focus on 'global techno-consumerism' (p. 4) which replaces the former after the 1990s. She also notes that Pelevin's solipsism, as expressed in his earlier work, has more recently evolved into a wider ethical regard for others. She counters those critics who accuse him of producing repetitious novels by pointing out that Pelevin's work addresses contemporary society and politics. Therefore any thematic stagnation reflects the stagnation of reality, rather than, as some critics suggest, Pelevin's contempt for his readers. [End Page 314] Perhaps Khagi's most notable claim is for Pelevin as a modern-day Dostoevskii. By considering both writers' concerns about contemporary society, their anti-Western sentiment, their hedgehog-like preoccupation with one central idea, and their characters' quests for self-improvement, Khagi demonstrates strong and convincing parallels between Pelevin and Dostoevskii. This thorough and thought-provoking exposition of Pelevin's œuvre provides a rich resource for academic readings of his work. In keeping with Pelevin's Zeitgeist-y texts, Khagi poses vital and timely questions about the true nature of freedom in an increasingly unfree world. Sarah Gear University of Exeter Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Russia's Capitalist Realism: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov by Vadim Shneyder

Reviewed by: Russia's Capitalist Realism: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov by Vadim Shneyder Jonathan Paine Russia's Capitalist Realism: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. By Vadim Shneyder. (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 2021. xii+248 pp. $120. ISBN 978-0-81014-249-7. It is a pleasure to welcome another new face to the growing ranks of economic criticism. In this, his debut monograph, Vadim Shneyder asks a crucial question: how did Russian novelists deal with the growth of capitalism in the nineteenth century? His study is not just a model of close textual criticism; it illustrates how thoroughly economic awareness pervades the Russian nineteenth-century novel. Whereas Western European counterparts often embraced the representation of economic change as a dynamic force in shaping novelistic plot and character, Shneyder argues that Russian writers struggled to describe Russia's idiosyncratic absorption of an industrial revolution which other nations had experienced decades earlier. He concludes: 'the experience of capitalism forced Russian writers to [End Page 319] confront the limits of literary representation and [. . .] some of the greatest works of Russian realist literature incorporated these limits into their structure' (p. 173). In this wide-ranging study, he shows how even the most conventional emblems of industrialization, such as the factory, are treated as either un-narratable because monotonous and banal, or else incomprehensible because unfamiliar and chaotic. Tolstoi, he suggests, incorporates the intrusion of this new capitalist society into Anna Karenina by the device of opposing two couples: Anna and Vronskii, represented by chaotic images of railroads, urban society, and extravagant consumption, and Levin and Kitty, represented by the synchrony of mowing hay in a timeless rural idyll. Dostoevskii confronts the implications of new economic patterns more directly, in Shneyder's perceptive analysis. The Idiot illustrates the developing schism between traditional merchants, represented by Rogozhin, and the new generation of emerging capitalists, such as Totskii and Epanchin. The merchants belong to an essentially sterile economy in which cash, symbolized by the wad of notes with which Rogozhin tries to buy Nastasia Filippovna, is the only means of exchange and yet proves immutable and unproductive. Notes may pass from hand to hand but never yield anything; and the merchants exist as a separate, closed society, represented by Rogozhin's Gothic house. Capitalists, by contrast, exist only on the fringes of the novel. Although not a subject of narrative interest, they persist as a pervasive background theme. By the time The Brothers Karamazov appeared in 1881, the transactional theme of money has become both invasive and insistent, advancing to the foreground. The sum of 3000 roubles, at the core of the novel's plot, symbolizes not just the consistency but the arbitrariness of exchange value. Dostoevskii's representation of the capitalist economy undermines faith in the validity of any kind of equivalence—a corrosive perspective which may attack the moral basis of society itself. Shneyder's tour of the realist horizon ends with Chekhov. Once again, he contends, 'the progress of capitalism threaten[s] the intelligibility of the world' (p. 174). Representing factories and other processes of economic production may now be unavoidable, since they provide the backdrop to many of Chekhov's stories, but his protagonists still fail to understand them. The bored bourgeoisie coexists with its economic means of support while trying to ignore or suppress it. Shneyder is at his impressive best when he stays closest to the text. His chapter on The Idiot is a remarkable demonstration of how the application of a particular textual grille de lecture, in this case the focus on how money circulates through the text, can deliver genuinely original insights into the novel's construction as a response to contemporary economic trends. His broader conclusions reflect established lines of criticism, but his particular skill is to provide new evidence through his sensitivity to the text. This is a valuable and readable contribution—Shneyder writes well—to our assessment of how Russian realism reacted to the spread of Western economic disciplines. Shneyder concentrates on how nineteenth-century writers addressed the challenge of representing—or failing to represent—these changing economic frameworks in their texts. The other side of this coin...

Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. By Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021; 162 pp. $99.95 cloth, $34.95 paper, e‐book available.

Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. By Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021; 162 pp. $99.95 cloth, $34.95 paper, e‐book available.

Naturalization

Naturalization Darrel Alejandro Holnes (bio) I haven't yet come out to my fam and I'm dating a white man named Matt.Everyone has a part of themselves they keep private, these days the secret is their issues with race or desire. Mamá always wantedto be American, but she'd read in Essence magazine about how its Black women were the least married in the country because ball players preferred white women on their arms.Can you hear her crying as I play ball with my white boyfriend?Hand jobs are the latest sex act in fashion. But then again, love is an older kind of allegiance than citizenship.Sometimes, I wear a cop uniform during sex and throw my loverbehind bars. This role play is not called Black Lives Matter. It's calledLove and Basketball. Matt plays the white college ball playerI've arrested for slipping a roofie into my drink while I was undercover at a frat party. [End Page 87] And now, in jail, he begs for my forgiveness. I tell him no one man can save himfrom a system; mass incarceration is the American way. But I, at least, can apply some lube and help ease the pain.Don't believe this part; it's too dark to be true. The American Dreamis not a fantasy. It's as real as the resurrection of turkey on Thanksgiving and the healing properties of apple pie.There isn't much difference these days between religion and history; if you believe it sothen that's how it happened. People believe more in their points of view than in facts. Maybe I shouldn'tbe any different. Maybe I'll just believe my mother already knows her son is in love with Jesus or some other white man. Mmm… Yes,I believe we all know it, to some degree, a truth so universal others, on some level, must know it too,if only they could make belief. Then maybe, just maybe, the rest could finallybe as free or American as I've just now come to be. [End Page 88] Darrel Alejandro Holnes Darrel Alejandro Holnes is the author of Stepmotherland (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022) and Migrant Psalms (Northwestern University Press, 2021) and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Poetry). His poem "Praise Song for My Mutilated World" won the C. P. Cavafy Poetry Prize from Poetry International. He is an assistant professor of English at Medgar Evers College, a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches creative writing and playwriting, and a faculty member of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. More at darrelholnes.com. Copyright © 2022 Pleiades and Pleiades Press

Review: Christ’s Subversive Body: Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics, by Olga V. Solovieva

Book Review| February 01 2022 Review: Christ’s Subversive Body: Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics, by Olga V. Solovieva Olga V. Solovieva, Christ’s Subversive Body: Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018. 328 pp. ISBN: 9780810136007 Mark Clavier Mark Clavier Brecon Cathedral Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2022) 40 (1): 88–89. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2022.40.1.88 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mark Clavier; Review: Christ’s Subversive Body: Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics, by Olga V. Solovieva. Rhetorica 1 February 2022; 40 (1): 88–89. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2022.40.1.88 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2022 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2022The International Society for the History of Rhetoric Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Mimetic Lives: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Character in the Novel. By Chloë Kitzinger. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021. xii, 256 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $120.00, hard bound; $39.95, paper.

Mimetic Lives: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Character in the Novel. By Chloë Kitzinger. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021. xii, 256 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. 39.95, paper. - Volume 81 Issue 3

Reader as Accomplice: Narrative Ethics in Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Alexander Spektor. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2021. xiv, 242 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. $39.95, paper.

Reader as Accomplice: Narrative Ethics in Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Alexander Spektor. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2021. xiv, 242 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. $39.95, paper. - Volume 81 Issue 1

Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Moral Acts. By Dana Dragunoiu. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2021. xxiv, 288 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $120.00, paper.

Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Moral Acts. By Dana Dragunoiu. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2021. xxiv, 288 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $120.00, paper. - Volume 81 Issue 3