Description
Book SynopsisBlending close readings of literature, films, and other artworks with analysis of texts of political philosophy, science, and social theory, Mieka Erley offers an interdisciplinary perspective on attitudes to soil in Russia and the Soviet Union from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. As Erley shows in On Russian Soil, the earth has inspired utopian dreams, reactionary ideologies, social theories, and durable myths about the relationship between nation and nature.
In this period of modernization, soil was understood as the collective body of the nation, sitting at the crux of all economic and social problems. The soil question was debated by nationalists and radical materialists, Slavophiles and Westernizers, poets and scientists.
On Russian Soil highlights a selection of key myths at the intersection of cultural and material history that show how soil served as a natural, national, and symbolic resource from Fedor Dostoevsky''s native
Table of Contents
Introduction: Groundwork
1. Native Soil: The Roots of the Organic Nation
2. Matter: Models of Soil and Society
3. Dirt: Dirty Literature
4. Sediment: Soviet Construction on Asian Soil
5. Wasteland: Platonov's Dialectics of Waste and Recuperation
6. Virgin Land: The Libidinal Economy of Virgin Land
Epilogue: Beyond Earth
