With Short Cropped Hair: Gleb Uspensky's Struggle against Biological Gender Determinism
2004; Wiley; Volume: 63; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1467-9434.2004.00327.x
ISSN1467-9434
Autores Tópico(s)Eastern European Communism and Reforms
ResumoThe Russian ReviewVolume 63, Issue 3 p. 479-492 With Short Cropped Hair: Gleb Uspensky's Struggle against Biological Gender Determinism Henrietta Mondry, Henrietta Mondry School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Canterbury, New ZealandSearch for more papers by this author Henrietta Mondry, Henrietta Mondry School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Canterbury, New ZealandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 28 May 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9434.2004.00327.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat References 1 See V. G. Korolenko, “ O Glebe Ivanoviche Uspenskom,”in G. I. Uspenskii v russkoi kritike ( Moscow , 1961), 331–45. Uspensky was an extremely prolific writer. His sketches, stories, and notes were short, sometimes not more than three-to-four pages long, but numerous. In his collected works (in nine volumes) they are grouped into series, such as “Krest'ianin i krest'ianskii trud” (“The Peasant and Peasant Labor”), and “Vlast' zemli” (“Power of the Soil”), among others. 2 See N. I. Prutskov, Tvorcheskii put' Gleba Uspenskogo ( Moscow , 1958). 3 V. I. Lenin, “V. I. Lenin o G. I. Uspenskom,” in G. I. Uspenskii v russkoi kritike, 49–56. 4 It is interesting that even symbolists like Merezhkovsky failed to notice the hidden layers of meaning in Uspensky's work. See Dmitry Merezhkovsky, “ O prichinakh upadka i o novykh techeniiakh sovremennoi russkoi literatury,” Izbrannye stat'i ( Munich , 1973), 207–306. 5 These themes are fully developed in his lengthy piece “Mechtaniia” (“Day Dreams,”1884). G. I. Uspensky, Sobranie sochinenii v deviati tomakh ( Moscow , 1957), 6: 197–218. 6 Henrietta Mondry, “How ‘Straight’ is the Venus of Milo? Regendering Statues and Women's Bodies in Gleb Uspensky's ‘Vypriamila,’ Slavic and East European Journal 41, no. 3 (1997): 415–30. 7 In this paper, by “body politics” I refer to the assignment of different psychological and behavioral patterns to people in accordance with sex and gender stereotypes. I follow Judith Butler's nonessentialist understanding of sexuality and gender as cultural constructs ( Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity [ New York , 1990]). 8 See Korolenko, “O Glebe Ivanoviche Uspenskom,” esp. 332–34. 9 Ibid. 10 Here Uspensky refers to Tarnovskaia. See P. N. Tarnovskaia, Étude anthropométrique sur les prostituées et les voleuses ( Paris , 1889). 11 Grigorii Bialyi, “ O realizme Gleba Uspenskogo,” Russkii realizm ot Turgeneva do Chekhova ( Leningrad , 1990), 491–536. 12 See N. G. Mikhailovskii, “ G. I. Uspenskii kak pisatel' i chelovek,”in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii Gleba Ivanovicha Uspenskogo ( Moscow , 1908), 1: xii–cviii. 13 There are stories in Uspensky that deal with the problem of human rights issues for peasant women. See, for example, his “Mechtaniia” (1889), which contains a response to the highly controversial article by Ia. Ludmer, “Bab'i stony”(“Women's Moans”), published in Iuridicheskii vestnik, 1884, no. 11–12. The article shows the abuse of and lack of legal rights for women in rural communities. 14 B. Dykhanova, for instance, does not problematize women's issues as separate from peasant topics in Uspensky's work (“ K odnoi tol'ko pravde…!”in G. I. Uspenskii: Sochineniia ( Moscow , 1988), 5–30. 15 For these issues see his“Vozmutitel'nyi sluchai v moei zhizni” (“An Exasperating Event in My Life,”1884), Sobranie sochinenii 6: 56–80. 16 In “'Pinzhak' i chert” (“‘A Jacket’ and the Devil,”1889), Uspensky uses the term zoologicheskii (“zoological”) to describe sexual relationships between peasant men and women (Sobranie Sochinenii 6: 265–301). 17 Already the Ancients connected the desexualized female body with greater freedom. Thus commentators on the story of Iphis in Ovid's Metamorphoses have pointed out that in the change of Iphis from a girl to a boy, the addition of masculine secondary sexual characteristics (darker complexion, short hair, physical vigor) are integral to the sex change. The loss of female genitalia is also strongly implied in the later medieval retellings of this story. All versions of Ovid's story suggest that the masculine woman is a sexually inactive woman, even if she has a prior history of womanly behavior. See Roberta Davidson, “ Cross-Dressing in Medieval Romance,”in Textual Bodies: Changing Boundaries of Literary Representation, ed. Lori Hope Lefkovitz ( Albany , 1997), 59–74. 18 See N. Sokolov, G. I. Uspenskii: Zhizn' i tvorchestvo ( Leningrad , 1968). 19 See Barbara Alpern Engel, “ Marriage and Masculinity and Late Imperial Russia: The ‘Hard Cases,‘”in Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, ed. Barbara Evans Clements et al. ( New York , 2002), 113–30. 20 Elizabeth Grosz stresses that European culture puts special value on the categories of firmness, tightness, and solidity, which are markers of masculine control, as opposed to feminine softness, submissiveness, and lack of selfcontrol. See her Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism ( Bloomington , 1994). 21 G. I. Uspensky, “Na bab'em polozhenii,”Sobranie sochinenii, 7:45–52, esp. 45. All translations of text passages are mine. 22 On the gender-specific categorization of klikushestvo in Russia at the turn of the century see Christine Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia ( DeKalb , IL , 2001). 23a On the masculine nature of the sun gods in Russian pagan pantheon see B. A. Rybakov, Iazychestvo drevnei Rusi ( Moscow , 1988). 23b On the psychoanalytic interpretation of the phallic nature of the sun's rays in the mythopoetic structures of folklore see Sigmund Freud, “ Psychoanalytic Notes upon an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia,”in Collected Papers, ed. and trans. Alix and James Strachey ( London , 1949), 3: 390–472. 24 Quoted from Francoise Heritier, Two Sisters and Their Mother: The Anthropology of Incest, trans. Jeanine Herman ( New York , 1999), 65. 25a I use these canonical sources as reflecting the “sin” side of sexual transgressions in peasant belief systems rather than using what is formulated as incest in Russian criminal law of Uspensky's time, which deals with these matters in a less religious vein. On incest prohibitions in Old Russia see Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900–1700 ( Ithaca , 1989). 25b On incest in Russian jurisdiction in the 1880s see Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in the Fin-de-Siècle Russia ( Ithaca , 1992). 26 On fluidity and the unstoppable flooding of menstrual blood as a marker of women's essence see Grosz, Volatile Bodies. 27 “Varvara,”Sobranie sochinenii 5: 277–96. 28 I am grateful to an anonymous referee for suggesting that the female bogatyrs of the byliny, who match men in strength until they marry them and then sink into the feminine role thereafter, are relevant here as a possible source. 29 On Cartesian dualism in application to a woman's body see Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies. 30 See V. Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, trans. Ariadna Y. Martin and Richard P. Martin, ed. Anatoly Liberman ( Minneapolis , 1984). 31 Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf ( New York , 1963). 32 In Russian literature the dual structure of the rising bread motif was explored in Aleksandr Beliaev's wellknown science fiction piece “Vechnyi khleb” (“Eternal Bread,” 1958). An ever-growing dough is invented, which first saves the world from starvation, but then threatens to flood the world and kill both men and animals (“Vechnyi khleb,” In Beliaev, Sobranie sochinenii v vos'mi tomakh [ Moscow , 1963], 4: 241–318). 33 V. V. Kolesov ed., Domostroi (St. Petersburg, 1994). 34 Ibid., 173. 35 Rybakov describes the baking of large loaves and pirogi as part of the rituals related to the well-being and prosperity of the old Russian agricultural communities (Iazychestvo, 467). 36 “Vypriamila,” 361. On the face/head and body dichotomy in the history of art from a comparative anthropological perspective see Otto Rank, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson ( New York , 1989). 37 Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God's Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism ( Boston , 1994). 38 See V. V. Veresaev et al., G. I. Uspenskii v russkoi kritike, 456–58. 39 Here Uspensky follows the well-known phenomenon of nineteenth-century male revolutionaries who believe in the saintliness of women revolutionaries. See on this discussion Elizabeth A. Wood, The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia ( Bloomington , 1997), esp. 21–26. 40 See V. V. Veresaev et al., G. I. Uspenskii v russkoi kritike, 456 (On pochti molitvenno preklonialsia pered nei). 41 V. V. Veresaev et al., Vospominaniia ( Moscow , 1946), 406–8, esp. 458. 42 See Korolenko, “O Glebe Ivanoviche Uspenskom,” 345. Uspensky spent the last ten years of his life (1892–1902) in various mental institutions in St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, where he tried to commit suicide. See Nikita I. Prutskov, Gleb Uspensky ( New York , 1972). 43 In “Vypriamila,” Figner was used as a prototype of a monastic maiden (Veresaev et al., G. I. Uspenskii v russkoi kritike). 44 G. I. Uspenskii. V. A. Gol'tsevu,”Sobranie sochinenii 9: 641. 45 This much-loathed condition was ascribed to Jewish men who, in European belief, were viewed as being of indeterminate gender. See Sander L. Gilman, Freud, Race, and Gender ( Princeton , 1993). 46 I use the Deluezean terminology of “becomings”; that is, becoming-woman, becoming-animal, as a manifestation of the desire to dissolve into elements, becoming-imperceptible. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley et al. ( London , 1984). 47a See Henrietta Mondry, “Beyond the Boundary: Vasily Rozanov and the Animal Body,”Slavic and East European Journal 43, no. 4 (1999): 651–73; 47b and V. V. Rozanov, “ Uedinennoe,”in Izbrannoe ( Munich , 1970), 1–80. 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