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Abstract: The article analyzes modern Russian novels addressing the problem of transformation of human consciousness which is no longer able to identify substitution or deformation of artistic values and uncritically accepts even an outright simulation of culture. While the dystopias of the 20th century highlighted the problems of socio-historical relations and conflict between power and man, in the dystopias of the 21st century, the rebellion of the consciousness of a free-thinking man against the fetishes, concepts and simulacra imposed on him is obvious. The problem of oppression and suppression of personality, deprivation of their freedom of choice remains, but is presented by writers in more sophisticated ways that allow them to control dissent and human consciousness. Tatyana Tolstaya’s dystopia “Kys” (2000) shows the transformation of a book from a ‘textbook of life’ into a collectible fetish having no intellectual and aesthetic value and unable to teach the characters to think. In Vladimir Sorokin’s novel “Manaraga” (2017), the book is a concept with multiple meanings associated with both a market product and distorted perception of true meanings by the masses. In the dystopia of Viktor Pelevin “TRANSHUMANIZM INC.” (2021), the book is interpreted as a kind of an imaginary entity, as a flickering simulacrum that has totally lost its original meaning. The authors of these dystopias use various metalinguistic experiments associated with parodic-critical conceptualization of literary styles and genres and emphasize the motives of the loss of the cultural code which is closely linked to the possibility of a person’s free moral and intellectual choice. The article analyzes metaliterary references and stylistically similar techniques of simulations and imitations of cultural codes in the dystopias of Tatyana Tolstaya, Vladimir Sorokin and Viktor Pelevin.

About the author(s) :

Natallia L. Blishch

Shenzhen MSU-BIT University (Shenzhen, PRC)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3147-9099

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 12.01.2023; date of publication: 24.06.2024

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