Article

Name: The Symbolic Capital of Khlebnikov and Mayakovsky Versus Avant-Garde Performativity. Semiotic Pragmatics of Avant-Garde Behavior and Life Creation

Authors: Dennis Ioffe

Université libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgium

Abstract:

Apart from offering a new glance upon the reasons of the “last personal conflict” between Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, this paper explores the differences in “discursive recognition” of the two major Russian Futurist poets. These differences reflect the Soviet reception of two prominent symbolists: Andrei Bely and Alexander Blok. The “approved” symbolist Blok was preferable to the “controversial” and “bewildered” Bely, who was published less frequently. In a similar fashion, the “good” futurist Mayakovsky was in a much better position than the “problematic” Futurist Khlebnikov, who published almost nothing during the Soviet era. Our understanding of the posthumous legacy of these poets depends largely on what we can call “collective memory,” using the post-Durkheimian concept developed by the French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945). This concept differs from “individual memory” in that collective memory is shared, transmitted, and at the same time deliberately “constructed” by the people who make up the modern social habitus. Halbwachs' ideas were taken up by Jan Assmann with the concept of “communicative memory” (a collective memory based on everyday communication) and James E. Young, who introduced the concept of “collective memory”, advocating memory as initially fragmented, “selectively assembled” and, above all, specifically individualistic. This article defines the behavioral and publishing strategies of the authors in the context of the dominant Soviet social order, analyzing how they were accepted into the ever-changing Soviet “cultural memory”. The paper demonstrates several significant inconsistencies in each author's strategic maneuvers and dwells on the possible reasons for their successes and failures.

Keywords: Avant-Garde, Collective memory, Russian Futurism, Pragmatics of behaviour, Symbolic Capital, Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov

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