The Fergana School of Poetry

P. 354–374.

Korchagin K.

The Fergana School is one of the most remarkable phenomena in post-Soviet poetry. Its representatives (Shamshad Abdullaev, Hamdam Zakirov, and Hamid Ismailov, closely associated with the school) proposed a project to recreate Uzbek literature in the early 1990s. This project involved inventing a new type of subjectivity akin to postcolonial subjectivity in many of its features. This chapter examines three modes of constructing this new subject: a process of rethinking Uzbek literature as part of world literature, elaborating a particular regime of visuality that distinguishes Fergana School texts, and searching for a new linguistic identity more cosmopolitan than what Uzbek language and literature could offer. This chapter examines these three themes as they appear in the Tashkent-based journal Zvezda Vostoka (Star of the East); Shamshad Abdullaev edited the journal’s poetry section from 1991 to 1996.

Keywords: modern russian poetry, Uzbek Poetry, Post-colonial studies

In book

The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.