Authors

Discussion

It is hardly possible to think of a literary work by the Russian author Vladimir Sorokin in which representations of the human body do not take centre stage. A number of scholars have demonstrated that Sorokin’s representation of shocking bodily violence serves as a device for deconstructing authoritative discourses, cultural symbols, and collectively shared narratives. Taking the insights of this scholarship as its point of departure,  this paper investigates why Sorokin chooses the body as his primary device for deconstruction in the first place: is there a relationship between discourses, symbols and narratives, on the one hand, and the body, on the other? If so, what is the nature of this relationship in Sorokin’s imagination? Offering new readings of works from the 1970s and 1980s such as The Norm and Marina’s Thirtieth Love, I argue that by rendering the body the object of aesthetic inquiry, Sorokin exposes how the production of knowledge, subjectivities, collective identities, and social realities is grounded in the workings of bodily affect. I further argue that Sorokin’s treatment of the body must be viewed in relation to his understanding of language as a material force that is capable of affecting readers and listeners on the level of sensations and feelings. This understanding, I contend, echoes the thought and imagination of the late Soviet underground, and informs the works he produced during the new millennium.