Sincerity after Communism: A Cultural History

304 Pages·2017·11.146 MB·English

by  Ellen Rutten

sincerity a fter communism
eurasia past and prese nt
General Editors
Catriona Kelly
University of Oxford
Douglas Rogers
Yale University
Mark D. Steinberg
University of Illinois
ellen rutten
Sincerity after
Communism
a cultural history
n ew haven and london
Copyright © 2017 by Ellen Rutten.
All rights reserved.
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contents
Preface vii
Introduction: Sincerity, Memory, Marketing, Media 1
1 History: Situating Sincerity 35
2 “But I Want Sincerity So Badly!” The Perestroika
Years and Onward 78
3 “I Cried Twice”: Sincerity and Life in a
Post- Communist World 122
4 “So New Sincerity”: New C entury, New Media 159
Conclusion: Sincerity Dreams 195
Notes 203
Bibliography 239
Index 273
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preface
There was this fashion among spin doctors: “The new sincerity.” . . .
The idea is that, allegedly, attempts are constantly being made trying
to lead us Rus sian nationalists down a false path— either by lulling
us to sleep alongside Mongols and Jews, or luring us into the dark
webs of Byzantinism. But in truth, what Rus sian nationalism
constitutes is very simple: that the trains in Rus sia should run on
time, that civil servants stop demanding bribes, that judges stop
listening to phone calls, that crude businessmen stop exporting
money to London, that policemen can live off their wages.
— Viktor Pelevin, S.N.U.F.F. (2011)
This book explores con temporary cultural production and consumption
processes— processes in which anx i eties about artistic, commercial, and
po liti cal sincerity take center stage. Writers and poets, bloggers, artists,
filmmakers, (fashion) designers, critics, po liti cal commentators, PR ex-
perts: t oday they rarely tire of asking w hether or not such- and- such a
person or phenomenon is being genuinely honest. Is U.S. President
Obama reviving sincerity in demo cratic politics? Are Danish films exem-
plifying a move away from postmodern sarcasm to a “neo- sincerity”? Is
Rus sian opposition blogger Aleksei Navalny truly po liti cally engaged, or
is he introducing a public “new sincerity” that is primarily career driven?
A new art- house film or collection of poems, the practice of bowling,
a new Nike design, My Little Pony merchandise: in our age, t here are few
phenomena that have not been linked at some point or other to visions of
a newly born (and, according to most commentators, emphatically “post-
postmodern” or “post- ironic”) sincerity. Symptomatic of the omnipresence
of the notion is the epigraph with which this preface begins. It comes
vii
viii preface
from a novel by Rus sian cult writer Viktor Pelevin, who never misses a
chance to parody pop- culture hypes. Pelevin’s satirical definition of “the
new sincerity” boils down to a detailed social diagnosis— one that, link-
ing transport timetables to commercial activities and legislative systems,
encompasses multiple layers of post- Soviet public life.
How should we understand the current infatuation with being true to
oneself ? And what does today’s preoccupation with reviving sincerity
tell us about con temporary society? These and related questions lie at
the heart of this book, which monitors the ongoing public debate on re-
vitalizing sincerity— that hard-t o- monitor virtue of “being oneself ” or
speaking truly of one’s private feelings.
As the above set of examples illustrates, the debate in question is not
limited to one par tic u lar world region. Discussions on the question
“What is sincerity t oday?”— and, in a related query, “What follows after
postmodern relativism?”—do not capture the minds only of “Western”
intellectuals. They are inquiries that have stirred heated debates in myr-
iad countries— and t here is, perhaps, no better place to start a quest into
the discussion’s non- Western hypostases than Rus sia, a society whose
more highly educated residents have long harbored an obsessive interest
in sincerity. What does it mean to be sincere and to re spect the truth?
This question has haunted Rus sian intellectuals with par tic u lar force
since Stalin’s death— but it began to make its mark on public discussions
on selfhood in Rus sia long before Stalin entered the scene.
This book tracks the Rus sian infatuation with sincerity, paying
special attention to its more recent manifestations, in perestroika- era
and post- Soviet Rus sia. Its first outlines date back to a hot July after noon
in 2001. That day, in the solemn aula of the Dutch University of Gronin-
gen, I heard professor of literary studies Liesbeth Korthals Altes use her
inaugural speech to map new literary- cultural trends. Korthals Altes ob-
served in recent Anglo- American and French lit er a ture “a clear bias . . .
towards sincere writing, engagement, and solidarity with those whom
society excludes, t owards a language whose rawness is supposed to
guarantee authenticity. These types of books have, of course, always
been written. What is new is that they now enjoy success among re-
nowned publishers and often attract reviews full of praise from eminent
critics.”1
preface ix
Korthals Altes concluded her speech by pointing to an “ethical turn”
in Anglo- American literary scholarship— one that was set in motion in
the 1980s and that refuted the all- pervading irony and relativism of
which critics accused postmodernism.
That same summer, I had been reading analyses of con temporary
culture by the Rus sian cultural theorist Mikhail Epstein. He similarly
spoke of a new sincerity in recent poetry. In his words, recent Rus sian
writings displayed a tendency where “the lyrical proj ect reemerges on
the vehicle of antilyrical m atter, refuse from the ideological kitchen,
wandering conversational clichés, ele ments of foreign lexicon.”2
As divergent as Epstein’s and Korthals Altes’s views on new cultural
developments are, they both single out the concept of a renewed sincer-
ity. In the months and years that followed, I started tracking usage of
this phrase and thinking about sincerity t oday. First I did so out of plain
sympathy for the notion of a new sincerity in con temporary culture
and art, but gradually my gaze became that of a more critical analytical
observer.
The pages that follow focus on lit er a ture and new media but also
monitor developments in art, design, fashion, film, m usic, and architec-
ture. They are not an attempt to prove that sincerity has actually under-
gone a rebirth in con temporary (Rus sian and global) culture. Nor do
they argue that we are at the dawn of a new age, or that such- and- such
an artist can unmistakably be identified with an emerging new sincerity
or post- postmodernism. These categorical assertions are not the types
of insights that interest me. What does interest me is the critical debate
that has built up around sincerity in recent de cades, and the insights
that this debate offers us into the emotional and cultural preoccupations
of t oday. I focus especially on its outlines in Rus sia, where the concept
has in recent years attracted disproportionate attention— but the Rus-
sian story interests me emphatically as part of the larger, transnational
story of a “new” or “reborn” sincerity. Within that story, I analyze three
discursive threads that, during my observations, struck me with par-
tic u lar force: those tackling questions of cultural memory, of commodi-
fication, and of mediatization. In monitoring these strands of the
debate, my analyses contribute to our understanding of more than just
sincerity rhe toric as such. They challenge the traditional narrative of
(Rus sian) postmodernism, in highlighting the considerable attention