Ilya Kalinin - Humboldt University Berlin; Serguei Oushakine - Princeton University; Tomas Glanc - Zurich University; Elizaveta Berquin - Modernitas; Vladimir Feshchenko - Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences; Michal Mrugalski - Humboldt University Berlin; Yulia Kim - Columbia University; Igor Pilshchikov - University of California; Emil Volek -University of Arizona; Lidia Tripiccione - Princeton University; Andrés Pérez-Simón - Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; Jessica Merrill -Columbia University; Patrick Flack - Fribourg University; Jorge Arroita - University of Salamanca; Alessandro de Lachenal - Independent researcher; Cristian Cámara Outes - Modernitas

International Workshop "New Readings on Russian Formalism at the Crossroads of Slavic Cultural History: Primary Insights and Perspectives for Future Research" - 21 and 22 October 2024, Université libre de Bruxelles

Exposé
The critical reception of Russian Formalism can be divided into three large, differentiated periods. The first period extends from 1914 to 1939 and consists, within Russia, of a bitter polemical discussion for and against the theses of the school and, outside the country, in its enriching transfer to other national theoretical systems, especially Czechoslovakia and Poland. The second period extends from 1939 to the mid-eighties and is marked by an impoverishing interpretation of formalism as a mere precedent of dogmatic structuralism that entails the critical neutralization of a large part of the movement's most relevant theoretical contributions. Some key dates within this second stage are the lecture by Roman Jakobson at the Masaryk University in Brno entitled The Formal School and Contemporary Literary Science in Russia (1934), the monographs by V. Erlich (1955) and P. Steiner (1984), or the anthology prepared by T. Todorov (1966). The third period, which lasts until today, is characterized on the one hand by the inertial continuity of many ideas coined in the previous stage and on the other by a surprising variety of new interpretations and reading perspectives. If in the second period of reception the formalist tradition was considered as essentially closed, in the third one (with a leading role of Russian authors) it is observed as a fundamentally conflictive, problematic and open-ended heritage.

The question of the theoretical precedents and intellectual context of formalism has been thoroughly scrutinized: Husserl, Bergson, Nietzsche, Romanticism, the German formal aesthetics of the 19th century, Veselovsky, the symbolist theory of verse, Darwinism or even the psychology of Wundt have been proposed as a conceptual framework from which to understand the emergence and significance of formalist theses. The accusation of supposed isolationism and unilateralism has been convincingly demolished, emphasizing the transgressive historicity and sociological openness inherent to the systematic conception of the school. In the field of novel theory, attention has been paid to the terms of siuzhet and skaz, and in the theory of verse, new approaches to the poetic semantics conveyed by the transrational poetry of the futurists have appeared. The key concepts of estrangement, construction, parody, procedure, interval, phonic orchestration, dynamic archaeology, dominant, textual equivalents, literary life (literaturny byt), literariness, among many others, have been reevaluated and correlated with current burning issues. Film theory and the intersections between formal theory and proposals in painting, theatre, architecture, among others, have been examined. The intertwining between the biographies of the members of the Opojaz and the turbulent historical times in which they had to live has been an object of interest, especially with regard to their positions on the national canon and the Soviet imperial project.

The eventful reception of formalist ideas during the 20th century has also been reconsidered, and in the context of this workshop special emphasis is placed on the topic of the relationships between Russian formalism and Czech structuralism, to which a specific panel will be dedicated. Finally, a separate subject is that of the coincidences and prefigurations between Russian formalism and contemporary trends such as poststructuralism, polysystem theory, translation theory, postcolonialism or the methodology of quantitative formalism used by digital studies. For many authors, formalism has the potential to play an enormous role in the overcoming and balancing of the unbridled heteronomism of contemporary literary studies, which again considers literature, to a large extent like the philological historicism of the 19th century, as a mere passive reflection of identity struggles that take place and develop outside of it. In this sense, the literary theory of formalism integrates critical-ideological lucidity and the anti-idealist conception of literature ("all essentialist definitions of literature are swept away by the fact of evolution", Y. Tynyanov), while providing at the same time a set of sophisticated tools for analyzing literary facts as a specific series of human activity with its own evolutionary laws.

Monday 21st October 2024 until Tuesday 22nd October 2024 from 11am to 5:30pm

Salle de réception
Bâtiment DE1 – Niveau 3 – R3.105
Avenue Antoine Depage 1
1000 Bruxelles

This event will be held in English

Free entrance

Contact : Dr Cristian CÁMARA OUTES