Hybridization of the Contemporary Historical Novel: Revolution, Fossil Culture and Ecology in Wu Ming’s Proletkult
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14198/pangeas.29839Keywords:
Anthropocene, Productivism, Science fiction, Ecosocialism, Alexander Bogdanov, productivism, historical novel, Russian revolution, Wu Ming, New Italian EpicAbstract
This article aims to explore the possibilities of the genre of the historical novel in the context of current ecological devastation. To do so, it takes as a case study the novel by the Italian collective Wu Ming dedicated to the Russian Revolution: Proletkult (2018). Emphasizing the figure of Alexander Bogdanov, heterodox revolutionary and author of the utopian novel entitled Red Star (1908), as well as the intertextual play that Proletkult engages with the latter, the study explores the way in which Wu Ming carries out a hybridization of the genre of the historical novel through science fiction to propose a “potential uchronia”. In Proletkult, this narrative devise materializes in the invention of Denni, a hybrid character who comes from a distant future and warns about the environmental dangers of the revolutionary industrial model. His perspective gives rise to an ecocentric focus of the story, since it allows questioning from an ecological approach the link established by the revolution between emancipation and a certain fossil culture. At the same time, the article concludes that Proletkult seeks in the revolutionary past a possibility for the socialism of the 21st century. In that sense, Wu Ming’s novel revisits the political possibilities of the past in order to propose an ecosocialist horizon in which human emancipation is not to be distinguished from its ecological and animalistic dimension. Ultimately, the work suggests that, instead of perpetuating the productivist and anthropocentric imaginary of revolutionary modernity, it is necessary to adopt a post-fossil worldview that reconfigures the relationship between the concepts of history, revolution and nature.
References
BOGDÁNOV, A. (2017). Estrella Roja, trad. Alejandro Ariel González. Buenos Aires: Ediciones RyR.
CHAKRABARTY, D. (2009). "The Climate of History: Four theses", en Critical Inquiry, 35 (2), 197-222. https://doi.org/10.1086/596640
CONRAD, J. (2018). Heart of Darkness (eds. Owen Knowles y Allan H. Simmons). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108553766
GROYS, B (comp.). (2021). Cosmismo ruso. Tecnologías de la inmortalidad antes y después de la Revolución de octubre. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra.
KREMENTSOV, N. (2011). A Martian stranded on Earth. Alexander Bogdanov, Blood Transfusions, and Proletarian Science. Chicago: Chicago University Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226454146.001.0001
LATOUR, B. (2015). Face à Gaïa. Huit conférences sur le Nouveau Régime Climatique. París: La Découverte. https://doi.org/10.3917/dec.latou.2015.01
LÖWY, M. (2011). Écosocialisme. L'alternative radicale à la catastrophe écologique capitaliste. París: Mille et une nuits.
PONS, M.C. (1996). Memorias del olvido. Del Paso, García Márquez, Saer y la novela histórica de fines del siglo XX. México: Siglo XXI.
TRAVERSO, E. (2019). Melancolía de izquierda, trad. Horacio Pons. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg.
TRAVERSO, E. (2023). Revolución. Una historia intelectual, trad. Horacio Pons. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
VINDEL, Jaime. (2023). Cultura fósil. Arte, cultura y política entre la revolución industrial y el calentamiento global. Madrid: Akal.
WENSEL, J. (2017). "Introduction", en Imre Szeman, Jennifer Wenzel y Patricia Yaeger (eds.), Fueling Culture. 101 Words for Energy and Environment. Nueva York: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823273935
WESSELING, E. (1991). Writing History as a Prophet. Postmodernist Innovations of the Historical Novel. Amsterdam/ Filadelfia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/upal.26
WU MING 1. (2009). "New Italian Epic 3.0. Memorandum 1993-2008", en Wu Ming, New Italian Epic. Turín: Einaudi, 5-61.
WU MING. (2018). Proletkult. Turín: Einaudi.
WU MING. (2020). Proletkult, trad, Juan Manuel Salmerón Arjona. Barcelona: Anagrama.
ZAMIATIN, E. (2016). Nosotros, trad. Alejandro Ariel González. Madrid: Hermida Editores.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel Rudy Hiller
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
