Political animal : : representing dogs in modern Russian culture / / by Henrietta Mondry.

• Superior document: Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics, Volume 59
• VerfasserIn: Mondry, Henrietta,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands ;, Boston, [Massachusetts] : : Brill Rodopi,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Slavic literature and poetics ; Volume 59.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (451 pages) :; color illustrations, photographs.
• Notes: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

This book is the first interdisciplinary study of the representation of dogs in Russian discourse since the nineteenth century. Focusing on the correlation between humans and dogs in traditional belief systems, in literature, film and other cultural productions, it shows that the dog as a political construct incorporates various contradictions, with different representations investing the dog with multiple, often-paradoxical meanings – moral, social and philosophical. From the peasantry’s dislike of the gentry’s hunting dogs and children’s cruelty to dogs in Pushkin and Dostoevsky to the establishment of the Soviet dynasties of border guard and police dogs, from Pavlov’s laboratory dogs to the monuments to the cosmic dog Laika and the subversive dog impersonations by the contemporary performance artist Oleg Kulik, the book explores the intersections of species-class-gender-sexuality-race-disability and, paradoxically, of Arcadian and Utopian dreams and scientific deeds. This study contributes to the unfolding cultural history of human-animal relations across cultures.

Table of Contents

Preliminary material / Editors Political Animals: Representing Dogs in Modern Russian Culture -- Introduction / Editors Political Animals: Representing Dogs in Modern Russian Culture -- When dogs were more expensive than people / Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinskii -- ‘The Children’s Hour’: Cruelty to dogs / Editors Political Animals: Representing Dogs in Modern Russian Culture -- Degradation narratives: Dogs and humans in social and moral transformation / Jacques Derrida and Marina Tsvetaeva -- The fate of dogs in partnerships with the marginalised Other / Alexander Pushkin -- Dogs and inmates in prison and Gulags: Writing and re-writing the humanistic canon / Sergei Dovlatov -- Dogs and their masters in police and prison service: 1960s-1980s / Abram Tertz -- The cult of the border guard dogs / Mikhail Bezrodnyi -- The hunter’s dog as hunted: White Bim Black Ear as the cult event of the Stagnation Era, 1970s-1980s / Ruvim Frayerman -- Transformation narratives: physical, metaphysical, scientific / Editors Political Animals: Representing Dogs in Modern Russian Culture -- Sleeping with the animal: boundary crossing in life and art (from pre-Revolutionary modernism to post-Soviet postmodernism) / Vasily Rozanov -- Conclusion: Dogs are ‘good to think’ / Editors Political Animals: Representing Dogs in Modern Russian Culture -- Bibliography / Editors Political Animals: Representing Dogs in Modern Russian Culture -- Index / Editors Political Animals: Representing Dogs in Modern Russian Culture.