Jewish fearless speech: towards a definition of Soviet Jewish nonconformism

ABSTRACT

The article proposes a model for analyzing the utterances of Jewish nonconformism in the late-Soviet Russian literature, based on Michel Foucault’s theory of fearless speech and Eric Gans’ theory of the origins of culture. The utterances of nonconformism transform an asymmetrical conflict into symmetrical nonvictimary relations, in which a new, supposedly real identity of a figure is revealed and mobilized for protest. These new relations are based on mutual recodification of different discursive configurations – political, moral, social, aesthetical, metaphysical, or mystical. The discussion will focus on the selected novels of Fridrikh Gorenshtein, Felix Roziner, and, in greater detail, David Shrayer-Petrov.