Dehexing Sex: Russian Womanhood During and After GlasnostGlasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union revolutionized Russian society. What effects, however, did they have on the status, role, and image of women in Russian culture? Examining the past turbulent decade of transition to "democracy" and a market economy, Dehexing Sex traces the ways in which Russia's concept of womanhood both changed and remained the same, taking into account dominant ideologies and social philosophies, sociopolitical organizations, women's writings, literary criticism, film, and popular cultural forms such as pornography. The lively, engaging chapters of this book examine texts by contemporary women writers in the context of the political, social, economic, biological, psychological, and aesthetic transformations that helped define them. Goscilo reveals that the Russian cultural revolution has reshaped the female image in varied and often contradictory ways. While increased interaction with the West fostered gender awareness, it also introduced imported Western sexist practices--especially the exploitation of female bodies--formerly proscribed by a puritanical censorship. Popular magazines, newspapers, and television propagated the image of woman as mother, ornament, and sexual object, even as women's fiction conceived of womanhood in complex psychological terms that undermined the gender stereotypes which had ruled Soviet thinking for more than 70 years. With the aid of feminist and cultural theory, Dehexing Sex investigates the overt and internalized misogyny that combined with the genuinely liberalizing forces unleashed by Gorbachev's policy of glasnost and perestroika. It exposes Russia's repressive romance with womanhood as a metaphor for nationhood and explores Russian women's ironic recasting of national mythologies. "Impressive . . . an important contribution to Russian studies and to women's studies. The author is an outstanding scholar, an energetic and original thinker, and her writing sparkles with imagination and wit." --Stephanie Sandler, Amherst College Helena Goscilo is Associate Professor and Chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Grammar of Womanhood | 57 |
Womens Space and Womens Place | 117 |
Copyright | |
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Adam's Rib aesthetic Andrea Dworkin Andrei Anekdoty artistic authors Basinskii's binarism Cabiria chronotope chto contemporary Russian conventional domestic Dworkin essay female body feminine feminism feminists film Fire and Dust gender genre glasnost Gorlanova Grushnitskii Helena Goscilo Hélène Cixous heroine hospital human Irina issue Krishtofovich ladies Lialia's literary literature Literaturnaia Liudmila Petrushevskaia male Marina masculine material ment metaphor metonym Mikhail moral Moscow mother myths Nadezhda Durova narrative Natal'ia nature Nina novel novella nude object Palei Passion patients perestroika Perlovka Petru Petrushevskaia physical physiological pinup Pipka pleasure political pomniashchaia zla porn pornography prostitute protagonist publications Pushkin readers recent rhetoric role Romantic Russian critics Russian culture Russian women's fiction Sadur sexual Shamara Shcheglova Shcherbakova shevskaia's social soul Soviet space Stalin stereotypes story Tarasova's Tatyana Tolstaya texts tion Tokareva tradition trans trope Ulitskaia's Victor Erofeyev visual Vladimir Sorokin West Western womanhood women writers women's fiction women's prose York