REWRITING BIOGRAPHY AS A FORM OF CONSTRUCTION AND TRANSFORMATION OF CULTURAL MEMORY IN MODERN LITERARY CRITIC

Abstract

Liberal and patriotic literary critics are social groups with their cultural memory that ensures collective identity. The material of literary critic is of interest for memory studies. Despite the announced end of literary centrism, it actively forms clusters of cultural memory, referring to the richest source - literature.

The genre of the jubilee article in criticism is not only a recollection of “our” writer. The biography is built in an extremely pragmatic way. It is reconstructed depending on the ideological goal of the critic. Some facts are being forgotten, some are designated as more important, others are resignified. As a result, values, behavioral patterns, images of “ours” and “strangers” are actualized and transmitted in the collective memory. The rewriting process is determined by dominant liberal or patriotic values. Moreover, liberals and patriots build different narratives of identity from the same “memorial” material.

Memory has the ability to "collect" a series of disparate events into various structured narratives. Memories about writers and events in the genre of an anniversary article become such narratives in literary criticism. Painting life as a heroic deed, critics create biographies that become signs of identification, distinctive markers of “ours”.

Patriotic criticism uses different strategies for rewriting biography: constructing "our" and " stranger" images of the writer, compromising the biography of the " stranger" author. As a result, typical plot models are singled out in narratives.

Traces of nostalgic discourse can be seen in modern biographies. "Remembrance" of the former significant status and merit as a form of nostalgia helps to alleviate the crisis of self-identification that is being experienced. Criticism creates a new identity by updating the past model of criticism and critic. Nostalgia for the Soviet means that the events of the Soviet period are considered valuable at the moment. The events of the Soviet biography are kept in the so-called "cultural archive". Not representative, not reflecting real reality, they turned out to be in demand, because they coincided with the dramatically experienced loss of status.

Thus, the rewriting process is caused by dominant liberal or patriotic values. Moreover, from the same “memorial” material, liberals and patriots are building different narratives of identity.