Yvonne Howell | University of Richmond (original) (raw)
Papers by Yvonne Howell
Prismatic Translation, 2020
Lingua Cosmica
This chapter theorizes that Soviet civilization was inherently “science fictional” in its ideolog... more This chapter theorizes that Soviet civilization was inherently “science fictional” in its ideological superimposition of scientific utopianism and radical social change. It imbeds a discussion of the work of the Russian science-fiction writers Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky in the social and cultural context of the Soviet Union. The chapter describes the development of the Strugatskys’ work over three decades, from rationalist optimism to humanistic despair.
Neohelicon, 2014
In the 1976 novella One Billion Years Before the End of the World, the Soviet Union's science fic... more In the 1976 novella One Billion Years Before the End of the World, the Soviet Union's science fiction writers A. and B. Strugatsky created a tale about contemporary Moscow scientists who are prevented by mysterious forces from completing their work. This analysis shows how the Strugatskys imbedded the systems feedback (cybernetic) paradigm into the familiar narrative stages of a socialist realist fairytale. The non-teleological principles of cybernetics could not be reconciled with the formal structure of socialist realism, so that the exchange between science and literature proceeded in an unanticipated direction. Insofar as writers used advances in Soviet science as a source of aesthetic material, they were able to create new possibilities of meaning and interpretation in a mandated literary form.
Slavic Review, 2006
This new reading of Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog challenges the two lines of thought tha... more This new reading of Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog challenges the two lines of thought that dominate existing interpretations. Cold Warinspired critics saw in the banned novella an anti-Soviet political allegory and ignored its astute treatment of Soviet debates on biosocial issues. Most other critics have cast Preobrazhenskii as a mad scientist in the Frankenstein tradition, unleashing forces he himself cannot control. Putting aside false antitheses, Bulgakov's novella emerges as a fictional exploration of ideas in eugenics, hormone replacement therapy, and the nature-nurture debate that had real urgency for early Soviet geneticists struggling for ideological support, and for Bolshevik policymakers trying to create a “New Soviet Man.” In this article, Yvonne Howell describes the competing scientific paradigms that provide a backdrop to Bulgakov's work and shows how attitudes from across the “nature-nurture” spectrum appear and interact in Heart of a Dog through the v...
Policing Literary Theory, Dec 19, 2017
Slavic Review, 2013
Science fiction is the genre that links our lives to the future: the faster the pace of scientifi... more Science fiction is the genre that links our lives to the future: the faster the pace of scientific and technological advancement, the greater our awareness of what István Csicsery-Ronay called “the science-fictionality” of everyday life. The more we feel the effect of scientific and technological change on global flows of economic, social, and cultural exchange (not to mention the blurring of biological and environmental boundaries), the more we are drawn to a literature that Boris Strugatskii identified as “a description of the future, whose tentacles already reach into the present.“ It is hardly surprising that scholarly interest in Russian and Soviet science fiction has been growing in recent years, with an expanding roster of roundtables and panels exploring the topic at professional conferences. Why talk about Soviet science fiction? As the articles in this special thematic cluster suggest, science fiction functions more as a field of intersecting discourses than as a clearly d...
Japanese Slavic and East European Studies
Slavic Review, 2010
Sociobiology investigates all manifestations of human nature—including our moral, aesthetic, and ... more Sociobiology investigates all manifestations of human nature—including our moral, aesthetic, and intellectual strivings—from the perspective of evolutionary biology. In this article, Yvonne Howell examines V. P. Efroimson's controversial 1971 Novyi mir article, “The Genealogy of Altruism: Ethics from the Perspective of Human Evolutionary Genetics,” in order to point out one of the paradoxes embedded in late Soviet culture: namely, the potentially reductive and reactionary discourse of sociobiology was used instead to make a compelling argument for social pluralism, intellectual freedom, and individual moral responsibility. Howell compares the initial rejection of sociobiology by liberals in the west with the valorization of Efroimson's evolutionary ethics among a broad spectrum of the liberal, educated public in late USSR. She shows how Efroimson updated the “evolutionary humanism” championed by Soviet geneticists in the 1920s to challenge enduring Brezhnev-era dogma about t...
Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture, 2006
The Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian Soviet and Eurasian History, 2008
Science Fiction Film & Television, 2015
Prismatic Translation, 2020
Lingua Cosmica
This chapter theorizes that Soviet civilization was inherently “science fictional” in its ideolog... more This chapter theorizes that Soviet civilization was inherently “science fictional” in its ideological superimposition of scientific utopianism and radical social change. It imbeds a discussion of the work of the Russian science-fiction writers Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky in the social and cultural context of the Soviet Union. The chapter describes the development of the Strugatskys’ work over three decades, from rationalist optimism to humanistic despair.
Neohelicon, 2014
In the 1976 novella One Billion Years Before the End of the World, the Soviet Union's science fic... more In the 1976 novella One Billion Years Before the End of the World, the Soviet Union's science fiction writers A. and B. Strugatsky created a tale about contemporary Moscow scientists who are prevented by mysterious forces from completing their work. This analysis shows how the Strugatskys imbedded the systems feedback (cybernetic) paradigm into the familiar narrative stages of a socialist realist fairytale. The non-teleological principles of cybernetics could not be reconciled with the formal structure of socialist realism, so that the exchange between science and literature proceeded in an unanticipated direction. Insofar as writers used advances in Soviet science as a source of aesthetic material, they were able to create new possibilities of meaning and interpretation in a mandated literary form.
Slavic Review, 2006
This new reading of Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog challenges the two lines of thought tha... more This new reading of Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog challenges the two lines of thought that dominate existing interpretations. Cold Warinspired critics saw in the banned novella an anti-Soviet political allegory and ignored its astute treatment of Soviet debates on biosocial issues. Most other critics have cast Preobrazhenskii as a mad scientist in the Frankenstein tradition, unleashing forces he himself cannot control. Putting aside false antitheses, Bulgakov's novella emerges as a fictional exploration of ideas in eugenics, hormone replacement therapy, and the nature-nurture debate that had real urgency for early Soviet geneticists struggling for ideological support, and for Bolshevik policymakers trying to create a “New Soviet Man.” In this article, Yvonne Howell describes the competing scientific paradigms that provide a backdrop to Bulgakov's work and shows how attitudes from across the “nature-nurture” spectrum appear and interact in Heart of a Dog through the v...
Policing Literary Theory, Dec 19, 2017
Slavic Review, 2013
Science fiction is the genre that links our lives to the future: the faster the pace of scientifi... more Science fiction is the genre that links our lives to the future: the faster the pace of scientific and technological advancement, the greater our awareness of what István Csicsery-Ronay called “the science-fictionality” of everyday life. The more we feel the effect of scientific and technological change on global flows of economic, social, and cultural exchange (not to mention the blurring of biological and environmental boundaries), the more we are drawn to a literature that Boris Strugatskii identified as “a description of the future, whose tentacles already reach into the present.“ It is hardly surprising that scholarly interest in Russian and Soviet science fiction has been growing in recent years, with an expanding roster of roundtables and panels exploring the topic at professional conferences. Why talk about Soviet science fiction? As the articles in this special thematic cluster suggest, science fiction functions more as a field of intersecting discourses than as a clearly d...
Japanese Slavic and East European Studies
Slavic Review, 2010
Sociobiology investigates all manifestations of human nature—including our moral, aesthetic, and ... more Sociobiology investigates all manifestations of human nature—including our moral, aesthetic, and intellectual strivings—from the perspective of evolutionary biology. In this article, Yvonne Howell examines V. P. Efroimson's controversial 1971 Novyi mir article, “The Genealogy of Altruism: Ethics from the Perspective of Human Evolutionary Genetics,” in order to point out one of the paradoxes embedded in late Soviet culture: namely, the potentially reductive and reactionary discourse of sociobiology was used instead to make a compelling argument for social pluralism, intellectual freedom, and individual moral responsibility. Howell compares the initial rejection of sociobiology by liberals in the west with the valorization of Efroimson's evolutionary ethics among a broad spectrum of the liberal, educated public in late USSR. She shows how Efroimson updated the “evolutionary humanism” championed by Soviet geneticists in the 1920s to challenge enduring Brezhnev-era dogma about t...
Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture, 2006
The Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian Soviet and Eurasian History, 2008
Science Fiction Film & Television, 2015
The idea that morally, mentally, and physically superior'new men'might replace the currently exis... more The idea that morally, mentally, and physically superior'new men'might replace the currently existing mankind has periodically seized the imagination of intellectuals, leaders, and reformers throughout history. This volume offers a multidisciplinary investigation into how the'new man'was made in Russia and the early Soviet Union in the first third of the 20th century. The traditional narrative of the Soviet'new man'as a creature forged by propaganda is challenged by the strikingly new and varied case studies presented here. The book focuses on the interplay between the rapidly developing experimental life sciences, such as biology, medicine, and psychology, and countless cultural products, ranging from film and fiction, dolls and museum exhibits to pedagogical projects, sculptures, and exemplary agricultural fairs. With contributions from scholars based in the United States, Canada, the UK, Germany and Russia, the picture that emerges is emphatically more complex, contradictory, and suggestive of strong parallels with other'new man'visions in Europe and elsewhere. In contrast to previous interpretations that focused largely on the apparent disconnect between utopian'new man'rhetoric and the harsh realities of everyday life in the Soviet Union, this volume brings to light the surprising historical trajectories of 'new man' visions, their often obscure origins, acclaimed and forgotten champions, unexpected and complicated results, and mutual interrelations. In short, the volume is a timely examination of a recurring theme in modern history, when dramatic advancements in science and technology conjoin with anxieties about the future to fuel dreams of a 'new man'.