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Literature has often been juxtaposed with work, as word and deed. But—even setting aside the many hours of physical labor actually involved in writing—key works of early Soviet literary theory and practice questioned this apparent separation, as they sought to imagine a new culture based on labor, overcoming the distances that traditionally separated those who work from those who reflect, read, and write. In particular, this lecture will examine the theories and practice of two modernist greats—Viktor Shklovsky and Andrei Platonov—as they touch on the materiality of labor, the physical environment, and of language. Attending to the laboriousness of reading the work of art in Shklovsky’s theory and to the materiality of the writing process as theorized and practiced by Platonov, it will track the aesthetic consequences of placing labor at the heart of art.
Aleksandr Prigozhin is the author of Modernism, Media, and the Politics of Common Life (Johns Hopkins University Press 2025). He received his PhD from the University of Chicago and has taught at the University of Denver and at Utrecht University, where he is an affiliate researcher at the Research Institute for Cultural Inquiry.
