Autofiction and Scandal: Russian-Language Lecture by Larissa Muravieva
Thursday, May 23, 2024 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1Hybrid: Online and Babel Books Berlin (Bernauer Straße 49, 10435 Berlin)
It would seem that the idea of the possibility of literary scandal lost its relevance back in the second half of the twentieth century, when traditional norms and taboos began to blur. In the era of postmodernism, it was difficult to imagine trials akin to those of the authors of «The Flowers of Evil» or «Madame Bovary». However, in our time, when autofiction has come to the forefront of cultural life, the possibility of literary scandal is once again attracting attention. The genre, which plays on the boundaries between the fictional and the autobiographical, not only calls into question the authenticity of the story told and undermines the prestige of autobiography, which has traditionally strived for truth, but also raises the issue of the boundaries between one’s own and others’ experiences. Writers of autofiction regularly find themselves at the centre of public scandals, face lawsuits for invading their privacy or deceiving their audiences, while their texts become the subject of litigation and even initiate criminal proceedings. Karl Ove Knausgaard, Camille Laurens, Christine Angot, Vanessa Springora are just some of the names that have found themselves at the centre of scandalous stories. Mixing the factual and the fictional, violating privacy, exploiting other people’s lives, distorting the past, writing about the dead are the main aspects that give autofiction a reputation as a scandalous genre. This lecture will discuss the most famous scandals in the world of autofiction, the ways the authors deal with the boundaries between their own and others’ experiences, and why the idea of a “stolen life” embodied in a literary work becomes one of the pivotal plots of autofiction.
Lecture will be given in Russian. Join online here or in-person at Babel Books Berlin (Bernauer Straße 49, 10435 Berlin).
Larissa Muravieva is a Researcher of Narrative and contemporary French Literature. In 2018-2022 she has taught at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences. At Smolny, she taught courses such as «French Literature and Art of the XXth Century», «Key Texts of French Culture: the XXth Century», «Transmedial Narratology», and others. Laureate of fellowship programs of the Center for Franco-Russian Studies in Moscow and of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. In 2017, 2018, and 2023, she was a visiting researcher in the postdoctoral mobility program at the Center for the Study of Art and Language (EHESS, Paris). Member of the European Narratology Network (ENN) & Société internationale de recherches sur la fiction et la fictionnalité (SIRFF). In Russia she organized a number of conferences and scientific events on the narrative studies: “Transfert narratologique : la Narratologie française en Russie vs. La Narratologie russe en France” (Moscow, 2017), “Narratological readings” (St. Petersburg, 2019), sections “Transmedial Narratology” and “Narrative Practices of Sense-Making” (St. Petersburg, 2020, 2022), etc. She is engaged in research in cognitive and transmedial narratology, autofiction, and contemporary autobiography.