Irina Sandomirskaja

I can broadly describe my interests in cultural studies, critical theory; Russian 20th century language, literature, theory, and film; the Gulag and the Holocaust, camp literature and memory; general questions of memory and heritage theory and practice, with a special interest to the USSR.

My first project in cooperation with Natalia Kozlova was a linguo-sociological analysis of an autobiographic manuscript produced by a self-taught author, an elderly working woman from Donbass; a case of the so-called natie writing with a deailde anthropological analysis of the text (Kozlova), the history of its publication, and an analysis of normalizing editorial interventions. (with Natalia Kozlova) Ia tak tak khochu nazvatʹ kino : "Naivnoe pisʹmo" : opyt lingvo-sotsiologicheskogo chtenia. Moskva: Russkoe fenomenologicheskoe obshchestvo: Gnozis , 1996

My research of Russian and Soviet patriotic phraseology yielded a detailed analysis of discourses around the notions of the native land and their use in ideological, propaganda, officil historical, and private communication in Soviet culture. Out of idioms of the motherland/fatherland (Rodina, Otechestvo, etc.) and their use in respective discursive practices I reconstructed an imaginary geography of the USSR and narratives of collective identification.(Kniga o rodine: opyt analiza diskursivnykh praktik .Wien: Wiener slawistischer Almanach. Sonderband 50, 2001)

Swedish- Russian and Russian Swedish representations of each other in literary and academic writing, 18th-19th centuries (with Ulla Birgegård, eds) In search of an order: mutual representations in Sweden and Russia during the early age of reason. Södertörn University, 2004

A study of language and subjectivity in Russia under Stalin, starting with the late 1920s to the mid 1950s, analyzed in separate cases and with an emphasis on the biopolitical factors in Stalinist language and culture politics and the critical theory of the Soviet automaton. Works anayzed are by Walter Benjamin, Konstantin Vaginov, Mikhail Bakhtin, Anna Akhmatova and Stalin; with an epigraphic study of the scholarly and writerly experience of the deaf-blind woman author Olga SKorokhodova. The book's central peice is a reading of Lydia Ginszburg on writing and dying in the siege of Leningrad. (Blokada v slove: Ocerki kriticeskoj teorii i biopolitiki jazyka. Moskva: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2013)

From the problems of space vs. identity and subjectivity vs. language, I turned to the dimension of time and memory, and modernity's collective practices of appropriating and using the past. Restoration, usually imagined as the opposite of revolution, is analyzed as a variety of mueum practice (art and historical restoration) and as a mode of reclaiming the past and modifying it at the same time, restoration as a mode of innovation rather than return to the previous state. Concrete cases presented as examples from both Western and Soviet modernity. (Past Discontinuous: fragmenty restvratsii. Moskva: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2022.)

ANTHOLOGY CHAPTERS; ARTICLES AND OTHER WRITING

Anthology chapters

”Certain Properties of Rhyme: Poetic Language Touching Abomination”, in: The Gulag in Writings of AlexandrSolzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov: Memory, History, Testimony / [ed] Fabian Heffermehl; Irina Karlsohn, Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2021, s. 177-202

“Сейсмическая поэзия, собирание человека и Колыма как историческое предвидение: Опыт рассеянного чтения “(Seismic Зoetry, the Gathering of Man, and Kolyma as Historic Foresight: An Essay in Distracted Reading), in: Körper, Gedächtnis, Literatur in post-totalitären Kulturen / [ed] Susanne Frank; Franziska Thun-Hohenstein, Berlin: Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2020, s. 247-268

"Das blinde Kind. Lew Vygotskijs Defektologie alspoetische und politische Allegorie", in: Anne-Kathrin Reulecke (Hg.), Margarete Vöhringer (Hg.) Sehstörungen: Grenzwerte des Visuellen in Künsten und Wissenschaften, Berlin: Kulurverlag Cadmos, 2019. SS. 85–105

"The Ghetto of Leningrad, the Siege of Theresienstadt: A Comparative Reading

of Enforced Communities", ""In: Anja Tippner (Hg), Anna Artwinska (Hg), Narratives of Confinement, Annihilation, and Survival: Camp literature in a Comparative Perspective. Edited by Anja Tippner and Anna Artwińska. Berlin 2019. Pp. 190–208

"Där en människa inte bör vara": Poeten framför det förflutna utan minne In: Historiens hemvist II: Etik, politik och historikerns ansvar / [ed] Patricia Lorenzoni & Ulla Manns, Makadam Förlag, 2017, ss.177-192

After the End of the World: Panorama. In: The End of the World:Contemporary Philosophy and Art. In: Marcia Sa Cavalcante Schuback and Susanna Lindberg (eds) (2017). London and New York : Rowan and Littlefield, pp. 235-256.

Clarice and Photogeny, or, "Not Knowing the Concept of Enough". I: Hans Ruin and Jonna Bornemark (red.) Ad Marciam. Södertörn philosophical studies 20, 2017. Ss. 199-209

Den fördömda lyckan, eller socialismens ekonomiska problem i Moskva. I: Revolution och existens: Läsningar av Andrej Platonov. Red. Tora Lane. Stockholm : Ersatz, 2017, ss. 133-156

Disoriented Names: Benjamin and Kierkegaard on Politics and History in Language. In: Marcia Sa Cavalcante Schuback and Tora Lane (eds.) (2015). Dis-Orientations: Philosophy, Literature, and the Lost Grounds of Modernity, London ; Rowman & Littlefield International, pp. 187-218.

Aesopian Language: the Poetics and Politics of the Unnameable. In: Petre Petrov and Lara Ryazanova-Clarke (eds.) (2015). The Vernaculars of Communism: Language, Ideology, and Power in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, London : Routledge, pp. 63-88.

‘Bez stali i leni’: Aesopian Language and Legitimacy. In: Bodin, Per-Arne, Hedlund, Stefan & Namli, Elena (eds.) (2013). Power and Legitimacy: Challenges from Russia. London: Routledge, pp. 188-198.

Rage in the City of Hunger: Body, Talk, and the Politics of Womanliness in Lidia Ginzburg’s Notes from the Siege of Leningrad. In: Goscilo, Helena & Hashamova, Yana (eds.) (2012). Embracing Arms: Cultural Representation of Slavic and Balkan Women in War. Budapest: Central European University Press, pp. 131-152.

The Leviathan, or Language in Besiegement: Lydia Ginzburg’s Prolegomena to Critical Discourse Analysis. In: Van Buskirk, Emily Stetson, Zorin, Andrei (eds.) & Ginzburg, Lidija Jakovlevna (2012). Lydia Ginzburg's Alternative Literary Identities: a Collection of Articles and New Translations. Oxford [u.a.]: Lang, pp. 193-234.

Iazyk-Stalin: ‘Marksizm i voprosy iazykoznaniia’ kak lingvisticheskii povorot vo vselennoi SSSR. In: Lunde, Ingunn & Roesen, Tine. (eds.) (2006). Landslide of the Norm: Language Culture in Post-Soviet Russia. Bergen: Dept. of Russian Studies, University of Bergen, pp. 263-291.

Derrida on the Politics and Poetics of Witnessing. In: Hans Ruin and Andrus Ers (eds.), Rethinking Time: Essays on History, Memory, and Representation. Södertörn Philosophical Studies, 9. 2011, pp. 247-256.

Return to the Motherland. In: Barker, Adele Marie & Grant, Bruce (eds.) (2010). The Russia Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham, [N.C.]: Duke University Press, pp. 735-742.

The Poetics of Memory and the Politics of Reading: Fourteen Episodes of Remembering. In: Johanna Lindbladh (ed.), The Poetics of Memory in Post-Totalitarian Narration, CFE : Lund, 2008, pp. 81-94.

“One Sixth of the World”: Avant-garde Film, the Revolution of the Vision, and the Colonization of the Periphery of the USSR during the 1920s. In: Kerstin Olofsson (ed). From Orientalism to Postcoloniality. Södertörn research reports 2008:1, pp. 8-31.

Cinema Thinking the Unthinkable: Cold War Film and the Non-Reality of Russia. In: Stephen Hutchings (ed). Russia and its Other(s) on Film: Screening Intercultural Dialogue. Palgrave : London, 2008, pp. 130 – 147.

Two Empires and the Sea: Change and Exchange in Search of an Order. Introduction.

In: Ulla Birgegård and Irina Sandomirskaja (eds.) In Search of an Order: Mutual representations in Sweden and Russian during the early age of reason. Södertörns Academic Studies 19. University college Södertörn 2004, pp. 7-20

A Cosmopolitan in Search of a Fatherland: Admiral Shishkov and the Linguistic Myth of the Russian Empire. In: Ulla Birgegård and Irina Sandomirskaja (eds.), In Search of an Order: Mutual representations in Sweden and Russian during the early age of reason. Ed by. Södertörns Academic Studies 19. University college Södertörn 2004, pp. 155-172.

Golaia zhizn’, zloi Bakhtin i vezhlivyi Vaginov: ‘tragediia bez khora i bez avtora’. Telling Forms. 30 essays in Honour of Peter Alberg Jensen. Ed. by Karin Grelz and Susanna Witt. Stockholm, 2004, pp. 337-355.

Opravdanie slovobludiia. Nomadologicheskaia lingvistika Zhan-Zhaka Leserklia. N. Fateeva (red). Poetika iskanii ili poisk poetiki: materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii. Moscow 2004, pp. 180-196.

Der Heimatbegriff in der sowjetischen und postsowjetischen diskursiven Praxis

Karl Kaser et al (Hrgs.) ,Die Wieser Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens. Band 11. Europa und die Grenzen im Kopf. Klagenfurt, 2002.

Writing on the Wall: Remont, Restoration, and Identity. In: Fiona Björling (ed.), Through a Glass Darkly. Cultural Representation in the Dialogue Between Central, Eastern, and Western Europe. Slavica Lundensia, No. 19, 1999.

Proletarian Tourism: Incorporated History and Incorporated Rhetoric. In: Mette Bryld and Eric Kulavig (eds.), Soviet Civilization Between Past and Present. Odense, 1998.

A shorter Russian version of the same chapter published in: Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’, No 4, 1996.

Walter Benjamin’s Moscow Dairy: A Mission to the Margins of History. In: Peter-Ulf Möller (ed). Reciprocal Images. Russian Culture in the Mirror of Travelers’ Accounts. Culture and History, No. 14, 1997, Copenhagen.

Old Wives’ Tales: Notes on the Rhetoric of the Post-Soviet Intelligentsia. In: Fiona Björling (ed). Intelligentsia in the Interim. Recent Experiences from Central and Eastern Europe. Slavica Lundensia, No. 14, 1995.

Selected academic articles

“Motalka, or Time in Chiasmus: Viktor Shklovsky’s ‘Revolutionary Choice of the Past’. Linguistic Frontiers 6(1), 2023 DOI: 10.2478/lf-2023-0006

“The Bodies and Memories of Murdered Cities”. In Ecological Concerns in Transition: A Comparative Study on Responses to Waste and Environmental Destruction in the Region/ [Ed.] Ninna Mörner. Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2023, 23–33.

“Лакуна в эсхатологическом измерении: от тотальности памяти к бесконечности незабвения” [The Lacuna in an Eschatological Dimension: From the Totality of Memory to the Infinity of Unforgetting] Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, nr 168, 44-55.

“Image, Afterimage, Counter-Image: Communist Visuality without Communism”. In

Constructions and Instrumentalization of the Past: A Comparative Study on Memory Management in the Region / [ed] Ninna Mörner, Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2020, 29-36.

“The Missing of History in Heritage: H.-G. Adler’s Novel The Wall”. Baltic Worlds 3 (2019): 52–57.

“Bakhtin in Bits and Pieces: Poetic Scholarship, Exilic Theory, and a

Close Reading of the Disaster.” Slavic and East European Journal, 61.2 (2017): 278–98.

“Welcome to Panorama Theresienstadt. Cinematography and Destruction in the Town Called “As If” (Reading H. G. Adler). Apparatus: Film, Media, and Digital Culture in Central and eastern Europe, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2016.0002-3.48 External link.

“Catastrophe, Restoration, and Kunstwollen: Igor Grabar, Cultural Heritage, and Soviet Reuses of the Past”. Ab Imperio, 2/2015.

“Naivnoe pis'mo piatnadtsat' let spustia, ili Na smert' soavtora”. Neprikosnovennyi zapas, No. 82, 2012.

“Ot avgusta k avgustu: Dokumental'noe kino kak arkhiv pokhishchennykh revoliutsii”. NLO, No. 117, 2012.

“A Politeia in Besiegement: Lidiia Ginzburg on the Siege of Leningrad as a Political Paradigm”. Slavic Review 69, no. 2 (Summer 2010).

Skin to Skin: Language in the Soviet Education of Deaf–Blind Children, the 1920s and 1930s. Studies in East European Thought, Volume 60, Number 4 / December, 2008.

A Glossolalic Glasnost and the Re-Tuning of the Soviet Subject: Sound Performance in Kira Muratova's Asthenic Syndrome. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema. Vol. 2 No. 1, January 2008.

(with Mark Lipovetskii) “Kak ne ‘zavershit’’ Bakhtina?” NLO No. 79, 2006.

“Sovrashchenie Rodinoi: Kommercheskii iazyk i simuliatsiia “svoego”.Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 54, 2001.

“Idioma i kul’tura: v poiskakh obshchego osnovaniia”. Etnolingwistyka, No. 8, 1998.

Selected essays for art editions and literary magazines

Shklovsky’s Anachrony: “A Revolutionary Choice of the Past”, in: Material: Filosofi, Estetik, Arkitektur: Festskrift till Sven-Olov Wallenstein / [ed] Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback; Helena Mattsson; Kristina Riegert; Hans Ruin, Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2020, s. 189-194

Ahasuerus on an Excursion: Austerlitz, 2016. Directed by Sergei Loznitsa

In: Mémoires en jeu: Revue critique interdisciplinaire et multiculturelle sur les enjeux de mémoire, 2017, no 4, p. 9-11

Det olikas likhet, det likas olikhet, Glänta, ISSN 1104-5205, 2018, no 1

Allt kunde ha varit annorlunda External link. (Everything Could Be Different, in Swedish) Glänta, No. 2-3, 2013

Misha Pedan: The End of la Belle Époque (catalogue text, in Russian and in Engish). Stockholm 2013

The How-To of Bare Life: a Story of O. Documenta Magazines

Det nakna livet – en läroplan (Naked Life: A Curriculum, in Swedish). Glänta, no. 1, 2007.

Antropofagi utan metaforer: fallet Leningrad (Anthropophagia without Metaphors : the Case of Leningrad, in Swedish). Glänta, no. 3, 2005.

Tedium Vitae, Curriculum Vitae. In : Faster Than History. Catalogue for the art exhibition, Helsinki : Kiasma, 2004.

“Public Artist, Go Away”: Pathfinding in the Citadel of Necessity. Ann Magnusson (ed.), Konst på SöS (A collection of essays in connection with a project of public art intervention at one of Stockholm’s central hospitals). Stockholm, 2002

Blind, Mute, Dead, and Melancholy. In: Bra mot melankoli – Remedy against Melancholy (ed. by Anders Kreuger). Edsvik konst och kultur, 2001 (exhibition catalogue, in Swedish and English).

Moscovia Felix: An Obscene Discourse about an Abscene Place. Year Book, Malmö Art Academy, 2000 – 2001

Dressing, Undressing, Cross-Dressing. In: The Memory of the Body. Underclothes During the Soviet Era. Moscow 2000 (exhibition catalogue, in Russian, English, and Finnish)

IKEA I Moskva (IKEA in Moscow, in Swedish). Moderna tider, 2000.

“Der Politisch-ökonomische Aspekt der Russischen Geduld: Und fuer den Kefir ein Extra-Dankeschön an alle“. Podium, Literaturzeitschrift. No. 113/114 (Vienna)

Self-Critical Narcissus: On Language and Power in the Mode of Seduction. In: Mika Larsson (ed). Shaking Hands and Making Conflicts (Catalogue), Partnership for Culture: Stockholm, 1999 (in English and in Swedish)

Writing and the Magic of Power. The Heresies – Idioma. A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. The Heresies, vol. 7, No 26, 1992 (a bilingual English-Russian edition), New York

Editorial Work:

(editor, contributor, and translator) Lakuna: Utrata, Ziianie, Otsutstvie (The Lacuna: Loss, Void, Absence), a thematic block of academic articles, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 2/2021, No 168, pp. 10–68 .

(co-editor/contributor) Cultural Heritage and the Property of Missing Persons; Special Issue, Baltic Worlds, No. 3, 2019.

(co-editor/contributor) Against the Scatter of the World (A theme issue on heritage and collectorship), Baltic Worlds, No. 1, 2018.

(co-editor/contributor) In Search of an Order : Mutual Representations in Sweden and Russia During the Early Age of Reason. Södertörn Academic Studies 19. Södertörn, 2003

Twenty Texts About the Body. Theories of Corporeality and Embodiment: A Reader in 20th Century Philosophy. Selection of texts, comments, and introduction. Manuscript.

(co-editor) The Heresies – Idioma: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. The Heresies, Vol. 7, No. 26, 1992, New-York (a bilingual English – Russian edition).