15th March 2023, 2:15 pm, Sala Riunioni, Palazzo Venera

Pavel Arsenev (Università di Grenoble)

The Tactic of Linguistic Exile between Political Emergency and Poetological Programme

The most current concept of relocation seemingly points to a purely geographical shift and thus deproblematicises political relations within the “homeland” (with which «emigration», in turn, was still very much concerned). However, what is relocated outside the door returns to the window (of our browsers) and questions about speech geoposition arise: today, it might even be more important from where you speak than what you say and where you are (although this is most often connected). This new sense of a geo-position should now be clarified by the metadata of any public/private speech: “Ah, you just (not) speak from Russia now? And what is it that you seem to be expressing not in Russia? In order not to sound too much from Russia”, etc).

The crack runs already through the very history of the language, before only non-we spoke a foreign language, now we ourselves have become half non-we, since the speech of one half of the Russian-speaking population has lost its meaning for the other half. This linguitistic division can also be seen as the appearance of a fourth East-Slavic language). So far, it might still only be a phraseological and intonational misunderstanding between Russian speakers from “here” and “there”, sometimes getting lost in this uprooted deixis. But there seemingly appear two Russian languages now, like passports — internal and external. One cannot get the second one, and someone else on the contrary has long lost the first one.

Details via https://dilles.fileli.unipi.it/en/courses/calendar-of-the-activites/ Virtual participation is possible https://tinyurl.com/conferenzaarsenev