Boris Lanin
(Univerzita Adama Mickiewicza, Poznaň)
29 October 2025 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/21683068496?pwd=UULbZvQwEQUallebWBp16ovk6RJOXy.1
Meeting ID: 216 8306 8496
Passcode: 974210
This presentation explores the concept of avatars and technological artifacts in the dystopian fiction of Vladimir Sorokin, focusing on Day of the Oprichnik and Telluria. Sorokin’s use of avatars, electronic devices, and symbolic objects highlights the interplay between technology, memory, and identity. The talk will draw parallels with earlier Russian dystopias like Zamyatin’s We, linking S-4711 to later digital avatars. Devices such as the “umnitsa” and tellurium nails serve both narrative and metaphysical functions, symbolizing control, ritual, and simulation. Holograms and robots are examined as tools of state power and as postmodern simulacra. Through grotesque, hyperbole, and parody, Sorokin critiques authoritarianism and the commodification of consciousness. His work ultimately reveals a world where technological advancement is entangled with myth, ritual, and the erosion of individual agency.
The talk will try to read Alexey Konakov’s novel Tabiya Thirty-Two through the lens of Johan Huizinga’s concept of homo ludens and the genre conventions of dystopian literature. Set in post-crisis Russia in the year 2080, the novel imagines a society rebuilt around chess as the cornerstone of cultural identity, a tool of state ideology, and a means of social control. The author explores how the image of the “playing human” — homo ludens — is transformed under a chess-centric dictatorship. Chess is reinterpreted not as a sport, but as a humanities-based discipline where academic and cultural contributions are valued above competitive success. The talk will draw on a wide theoretical framework, including Michel Foucault’s biopolitics, Continue reading Guest lecture – Orwell’s legacy and strange new Russian dystopias
