Presentations by Streams

As the literary histories of multiple languages and cultures underpin, experimentations with literary forms, genres, modes of writing and mechanisms of literary distribution often result from a feeling of doubt towards established literary norms. In turn, such experimentations cause contradictory responses: feelings such as enthusiasm, as well as suspicion; attitudes of hope, but also scepticism; visions of the future which are, at times, optimistic and, at others, pessimistic. Put simply, literary experimentation is a matter of trust. Annette Baier’s definition of trust as a three-place predicate (A entrusts B with C which is, in turn, valuable to A) suggests that the study of trust is essentially the study of objects, concepts, and beliefs which are of value to a given person, a community or a society at a given moment in time and space; but also, of the structures and mechanisms that exist to provide care for them. Based on the above definition, the three papers in this panel use trust as a conceptual framework to explore how the literary experimentation in four contemporary case studies – Katja Petrowskaja’s book Maybe Esther (Vielleicht Esther, 2014), Evgenii Gornyi’s digital project Others’ Words (Chuzhye slova, 2001), Roman Prokofiev’s Zvezdnaia Krov'-5. Vechnost’ and Evgenii Gartzevich’s Otmorozhennyi – serves to reinvent the cultural work that literature, authors, readers and institutions could do in order to provide care for what, according to these works, is of value in the current moment.