Intellectual dialogue among Russian-speaking diaspora in Berlin: Smolny Beyond Borders and Babel Books collaborate in literary event series

Dr. Larissa Muraveva is a literature instructor and researcher at Bard College Berlin and Smolny Beyond Borders. Recently, she has partnered with Russian-language bookstore Babel Books Berlin to hold a series of public lectures centered around the theme of autofiction literature. In this interview, read about the partnership between SBB and Babel Books, as well as Muraveva’s work as an academic in exile.

How did Smolny Beyond Borders come to partner with Babel Books? How does the partnership fit into SBB's mission?

“The opening of Babel Books in Berlin coincided with the start of the last academic year and the arrival in Berlin of several colleagues involved in the Smolny Beyond Borders project, including myself. My colleagues, students, and I were at the opening last September, and then we often went there for books and events, and finally I had the idea of organizing a series of public events. Babel Books is an evident partner for the Smolny Beyond Borders project, as it works for the Russian-speaking diaspora in Berlin, organizing intellectual events and becoming a platform for meetings and discussions. The educational and outreach goals of Babel Books coincide with the mission of Smolny Beyond Borders.” 

How did you come to be involved with Smolny Beyond Borders?

“Since 2018, I have been a faculty member at Smolny College in St. Petersburg, where I taught courses such as ‘French Literature and Art of the Twentieth Century,’ ‘Transmedial Narratology,’ and others. In 2022 I was forced to leave Russia and found myself in exile in Israel. While there, I joined the online Smolny Beyond Borders project for scholars, teachers, and students in forced emigration. In the spring of 2023, I taught my first course in the project, called 'Trauma Narratives in Contemporary Russian Literature.' It was a powerful experience teaching and researching immersion in the cultural trauma unfolding before our eyes, and the class became a real laboratory for me and my students to explore the ways in which literature responds to current events. To date, I have also taught courses such as ‘Autofiction at the Crossroads of Experience and Writing’ and ‘French Modernism.’”

I see that Babel Books is positioned not only as a bookstore, but also as an intellectual platform for the Russian-speaking diaspora: What is the significance of this space, especially in light of current events, in your view?

“Yes, indeed. Babel Books Berlin was created as a franchise of the Babel Books project, which was founded 8 years ago in Tel Aviv. Babel Books Tel Aviv has established a tradition of intellectual communication, lectures, and events for the Russian-speaking diaspora in Tel Aviv. It also hosts exhibitions and concerts. In addition, Babel Books is not only a bookstore, but also a publishing house, and they often present their edited and published books. The bookstore in Berlin continues this tradition: having been opened last September, Babel Books Berlin has formed an intellectual environment for the Russian-speaking diaspora in less than one year. They have a rich public programming: every week they organize lectures, meetings with writers, book presentations. Their popularity is not only due to the fact that Berlin has a large Russian-speaking diaspora, but also to the fact that Babel Books Berlin focuses on selling non-fiction, intellectual, scientific, and philosophical literature. This attracts readers to come to the events.”

Your recent lectures organized at Babel are centered around autofiction. What makes autofiction such a significant genre to explore, in Russian literature or otherwise?

“Autofiction is a relatively recent trend for Russian literature, but it is developing rapidly. Critics have only recorded the spread of the term ‘autofiction’ in Russian literature since 2019, but since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the genre has become one of the most sought-after. Independent media now recognize autofiction as the main genre of Russian literature, authors are experimenting with the form of self-writing, and due to censorship restrictions, more and more Russian-language publishers («tamizdat») abroad are starting to publish autofiction. What can explain this popularity? On the one hand, Russian-language autofiction is becoming a form of literary resistance to the political regime in the Russian Federation: authors often speak out against war and laws, recount experiences of autofiction on violence or trauma, and explore their own identities, being included in the search for their own subjectivity in the context of political and cultural catastrophe. On the other hand, autofiction becomes a literary practice through which writers make visible experiences that have long remained in the shadows of cultural representations because of taboos or propaganda. These and other reasons make autofiction one of the main prominent literary genres in today's Russian-language literature, so I decided to devote my series of lectures at Babel Books Berlin to autofiction. I'd also like to mention that James Harker and I co-taught an ‘Autofiction’ class at Bard College Berlin last spring, and that experience also inspired me to create a separate mini-course for a Russian-speaking audience.”

Are there other forms of collaboration between SBB and Babel coming in the future?

“At the end of September, I will be giving the last lecture of the autofiction series as part of the cooperation between SBB and Babel Books Berlin. I would also like to share publishing plans: together with Babel Books Tel Aviv, we are preparing to publish a collection of autofiction short stories written by SBB students as part of my autofiction class. Hopefully we'll have a presentation of this book in the future.” 

Information about Muraveva's final autofiction lecture will be posted by Babel Books Berlin in September. Recordings of the previous two lectures are available on YouTube ("Autofiction between Fiction and Trauma," "Autofiction and Scandal"). This fall semester, Muraveva will be teaching the course “Trauma in Literature” at Bard College Berlin. The course will explore the ways literary practices deal with the representation of traumatic experience in the post-Freudian tradition and within contemporary literary theories of trauma. 

By: Sophia Paudel, Bard College Berlin Communications

Post Date: 07-16-2024