HETEROTOPIES OF HISTORY IN THE NOVEL OF L. ULITSKAYA "MEDEA AND HER CHILDREN"

Abstract

The study is devoted to one of the components of the feminine picture of the world – the "female" version of the chronotope. The purpose of the article is to consider the chronotopic originality of gender-marked women's literature on the example of L. Ulitskaya's novel "Medea and Her Children". In the course of the analysis the authors have found that the specificity of the "female" version of the chronotope in the novel "Medea and Her Children» is determined by its heterotopy, which in its turn correlates with the category of transgression. In "Medea and Her Children," the historical transgression takes place through the polarization of the "male" and "female" version of the signification of history, revealing itself in relation to the image of the "navel of the earth", centering the entire chronotopical system of the novel. In addition, the "female" version of the historical discourse defines its transformation into heterotopy of history, which fundamentally destroys the binary opposition of sacral and profane history. The unifying principle is the understanding of the traumatic nature of historical discourse in all its manifestations. The authors come to the conclusion that the novel "Medea and Her Children", which constructs a feminine picture of the world, demonstrates a consistent rethinking of the narrative of history in a completely different aspect to the patriarchal culture. L. Ulitskaya focuses not so much on fixing traumatic experience of history and revealing the causes of historical catastrophism, but also reveals the process of overcoming it, avoiding the existing oppositions and dichotomies, through the prism of which it was traditionally conceived.