Viktor Pelevin’s Postmodern Apocalypse

  • Artemy Magun
Keywords: apocalypse, сontemporary Russian literature, Pelevin, Platonov, Porshnev

Abstract

This article is devoted to the work of the leading living Russian prose writer, Viktor Pelevin, in the context of the image and idea of world’s end that is so present in his writings. In many of Pelevin’s novels, a fictional world that the reader first accepts turns out to be a deliberate creation of this or that demiurge, realistically depicted as spin doctor. Apocalypse is thus rendered in a Gnostic/Buddhist manner. What is specific for Pelevin against a background of the postmodern and cyberpunk genres he continues, is the elaboration of an antiworld symbolic weapon, a formula that counters a world so as to make it perish. The main reason for this motif is the desire to protect/shelter oneself—and the reader—from the violence of language that remains authoritative even in absence of any public authority.

Author Biography

Artemy Magun

PhD in Philosophy, PhD in Political Science, Professor of Democratic Theory
European University at St Petersburg, Department of Political Science and Sociology 
Gagarinskaya ul., d. 6/1A, Saint Petersburg, Russia 191187
e-mail: amagun@eu.spb.ru

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Published
2017-07-24
How to Cite
Magun, A. (2017). Viktor Pelevin’s Postmodern Apocalypse. Stasis, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.33280/2310-3817-2017-5-1-86-102
Section
Thematic Articles