Chubarov, I. M. Creative Writing and Experience of Violence

Abstract: The article is devoted to the relation between violence and literature. The purpose of creative writing is, if not to overcome, then at least to define and describe the causes of violence that intertwined with all layers of social life from economy and politics to visual art and sexuality. Noteworthy that violence is viewed not as an ephemeral quality that can be controlled and regulated by law, morals, social mechanisms or ideology but as an immanent anthropological experience or internal quality of social life. The experience of violence determines social life from the bottom layers to the upper layers, from the violence in images and discursive violence to sexual harassment and using bodies for economic purposes. Based on the examples from Russian literature, first of all, Lev Tolstoy and Fedor Dostoevsky, the author of the article compares different theoretical approaches to the relation between creative writing and violence offered by T. Adorno, Yu. Kristva, V. Podoroga and others. In the article the author uses the method of the anthropological analysis of literature and art developed in the division of analytical anthropology at Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as the textual and comparative analysis of literary writings. The novelty of the research is in viewing the Russian literature as the anthropological experience of image production in response to violence and persecution in society. Literature and art interest the author because they are part of the modern socio-political process they do not only entertain or comfort or please us but also change us and the surrounding social reality.

Keywords: