Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2020
Abstract
The post-1989 literary-historical narrative that is found in certain literary handbooks distinguishes the phenomenon of samizdat during the 1970s and 1980s as a special case in the circulation of lite-rature, treating it as a separate phenomenon from conventional literature and its dissemination, which goes from publishing to printing, then to distribution and the bookstore. This article presents an outline for considering samizdat as a kind of normality in the context of political totalitarianism, which claims on one hand to protect normality by 'normalising' the social environment, yet by doing so brings about the violent reversal of normal conditions.