THE SPACE OF POSTMEMORY AND MEMORY OF THE THING IN THE NOVEL “IN MEMORY OF MEMORY” BY MARINA STEPANOVA

Abstract

The paper examines the category of postmemory, the space of postmemory, relations between large and small narratives. It highlights the phenomenon of thingism and the “memory of the thing” in Russian postmodern literature and its transformation in the novel “In memory of memory”. The concept “memory of the thing” describes the ability of a thing to save space, temporality inside it, symbolism and temporality of a thing. The concept “memory of the thing” is shown as a concept which overcomes the anthropocentrism and transfers the category of the past to the semantic field of materialism. An important part of the study is the derivation of the category of thingism in Russian postmodern literature. Also, the paper examines the intricate structure of the novel and its value in a wide literary context.