The split subject of 'Russian' history in A Disgraceful Affair – Skverny Anekdot.

This article situates Dostoevsky's short story A Disgraceful Affair in a Lacanian, psychoanalytic context in order to interrogate Bakhtin's reading of Dostoevsky's poetics through his concepts of the 'carnivalesque', the 'chronotope', and the 'threshold'. Focusing on 'shame' and 'repetition' as func...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in East European Thought Vol. 77; no. 5; pp. 899 - 920
Main Author: Ascroft, Edward
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Oct2025
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:This article situates Dostoevsky's short story A Disgraceful Affair in a Lacanian, psychoanalytic context in order to interrogate Bakhtin's reading of Dostoevsky's poetics through his concepts of the 'carnivalesque', the 'chronotope', and the 'threshold'. Focusing on 'shame' and 'repetition' as functions of Otherness in this story, it will analyse the aesthetic means by which Dostoevsky constructs a 'new' pathological subject. It argues that in this neglected short story Dostoevsky's protagonist can be analysed much like the 'subjects' of poststructuralism, creating a split subject of 'Russian' history.