Modernist Exiles: the Berlin Years of Viktor Shklovsky, Aleksei Remizov, and the Masturbating Ape

Asiya Bulatova

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Chapter 9 Modernist Exiles: the Berlin Years of Viktor Shklovsky, Aleksei Remizov, and the Masturbating Ape

In: Modernism beyond the Human

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Asiya Bulatova

Asiya Bulatova
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 199–219

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549685_011

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Abstract

With the emergence of numerous literary groups and organizations after the Russian revolution, artists, writers, and scholars faced a difficult task of finding safe working environments. The article focuses on Viktor Shklovsky’s surprising choice of affiliation – The Great Liberal Order of Monkeys, a playful literary “secret society” founded by modernist Alexei Remizov. Presented with an opportunity to subvert the anthropocentric model of institutionalized collectivity and assume nonhuman agency, Shklovsky, among other artists and literary figures, readily gave up his human identity and adopted the title of a “bobtailed monkey.” In engaging with vulnerability, the article examines how Shklovsky and Remizov’s writings suggest a new form of ethics, which focuses on the sustainability of communal existence, by juxtaposing animal migration and communal-nomadic life with solitary and often dangerous trajectories of post-revolutionary emigration. During his exile in Berlin, Shklovsky details his encounter with a solitary ape in Berlin’s zoo, which challenges his experience of interspecies empathy as the ape begins to masturbate. I argue that in focusing on practices and experiences shared by human and nonhuman animals, such as expressing sexual needs, requiring privacy, depending on food, and experiencing constraint, these writings contrast Shklovsky’s isolating experiences of exile with trans-species mutuality and collectivity.

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Modernism beyond the Human

Transnational Perspectives

Series: Critical Posthumanisms, Volume: 4

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004549685

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 29 Sep 2023

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

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Part 1 Modernism and the Nonhuman

Part 2 Modernist Animals

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Chapter 9 Modernist Exiles: the Berlin Years of Viktor Shklovsky, Aleksei Remizov, and the Masturbating Ape

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Modernism beyond the Human

Transnational Perspectives

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