Transformation of “Alien” Text as a Technology for Generating the New in Russian Drama of the 1990s–2010s

Abstract

The essay examines the “alien” text as a technology for generating something new within the concept of dialogic nature of creativity. This technology is regarded as an algorithm that authors use when an “other” appears – another's individual vision and understanding of reality. The study includes the dramatic texts relating to the latest developmental period of an artistic language, defined as the author's period. In particular, we consider the works of Vladimir Sorokin, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Boris Akunin and Asya Voloshina to be representational for this period. We have described the most frequent techniques of using the “alien” text in postmodern (1990s–2000s) and recent (2010s) drama and found the examples of generating the new with one and the same technique but in absolutely different manner predefined by the author's intention. One method presents the interaction with “other” artistic systems that are fundamentally “alien”, in the form of their demolition or disintegration inspired by the author's general sense of life, which allows us to speak about situation of epistemic doubt. Another method involves the “alien” text technology when there is a need to overcome a crisis, to open up a productive dialogue with the “other”. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.