Information about the author:
Natalia V. Kovtun
Natalia V. Kovtun — DSc in Philology, Professor, V.P. Astafiev Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University, Ada Lebedeva Str. 89, 660049 Krasnoyarsk, Russia; F.M. Dostoevsky Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy, Fontanka River Emb. 15, 191023 St. Petersburg, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6799-4685
E-mail:
This study was carried out at F.M. Dostoevsky Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy with a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 23-18-00408), https://rscf.ru/project/23-18-00408/
Abstract:
The article is devoted to the problem of “other places” (according to M. Foucault’s terminology) in F.V. Gladkov’s novel “Cement”, which has become one of the examples of the production novel. The author’s attention to heterotopic spaces as territories between the not-place and the good place is connected with the desire to convey the very process of overcoming the laws of the possible through the efforts of a new man who builds a garden city. Proletarian ideology, while proclaiming a new world, relies, however, on models rooted in culture, endowing them with a different meaning. The Krupskaya Orphanage, the House of Soviets, the Comintern Club, sacralised as replicas of the Future in the pitch black present, are established in the place of the former family home, the estate with a garden. The Other existence had to appear out of nowhere, but it had to have recognisable features so as not to shock. The article analyses the specifics of existence within “heterotopia”, as it is understood by the artist and embodied by selected characters. The result is a contradictory picture of the future, where there are no places adapted for small life. In such a chronotope, personality in its usual sense (as a carrier of individuality) does not exist. The heroes of the novel are either masses or inanimate objects whose fates are given to the Party-Demiurge.