“A Late, Embarrassed Descendant”. Male Initiations in the Shadow of a Gulag Camp, Purga, and Totemic Blood

• Published in: Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne
• Main Author: Ubertowska, Aleksandra
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Polish
• Published: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego 2020
• Subjects: socio; permafrost; Subarctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.31261/SSP.2020.15.05; https://bibliotekanauki.pl/articles/534537.pdf; https://bibliotekanauki.pl/articles/534537

What this article attempts to gauge are the possibilities stemming from combining two methodologies: masculinity studies (as a part of gender studies) and ecocriticism/environmental studies. The material for the analysis is the novel by Sergei Lebedev, Oblivion. The author of the article reconstructs the hegemonic pattern of male initiation present in the novel and related with post-communist inheritance of Grandfather II, one of the novel’s characters. Overcoming the imposed pattern of masculinity (authoritative, totalitarian) takes a form of journey into subarctic Russia and seeking the traces of gulag camps. Climate-related factors play a significant role in this process: motifs of Purga, of permafrost, and endemic plant species of Ural and Syberia.