Description:
"'Our Native Antiquity' Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Culture of Russian Modernism is one of those works whose theme seems to lie in plain view, but, until the appearance of this study, remained unnoticed... It introduces essential correctives to the history of national-cultural self-consciousness.... the author's achievement is outstanding. [It] allows one to present modernism not only as a revolution of ideas and aesthetic tastes, but as a transformation of the symbolic 'habitat, ' with an entire gamut of new sensations accompanying this radical restructuring of the cultural ecology." --Boris Gasparov, Ab Imperio
-- "Ab Imperio"Review Quotes: "This ambitious book shows powerfully how much modernism indulged a fascination with the deep past alongside its obvious push toward the desired future. Beautifully written and subtly theorized, Kunichika's work focuses on specific artefacts--the Stone Women, the burial mounds, and the remarkable Scythian skeleton discovered in the 1920s--within a rich context of archaeology, aesthetics, and historical inquiry. These tales of cultural appropriation and enduring fascination with sites and objects offer us new readings of texts both written and cinematic by Bobrov, Khlebnikov, Pil'niak, and Vertov, among others."--Stephanie Sandler, Ernest E. Monrad Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University