Die Leere des Politischen: Null-Texte zwischen Performance und Demonstration

International Journal for Comparative Cultural Studies. 2023. Vol. 10. P. 237–251.

Pavlovets M.

This article defines the ‘zero text’ as a text that is completely absent(ed) and is re-placed by its own paratext. Such a text is a pure statement, the content of which is constituted by its context, presentation, and authorship (or performance), as well as the form of the ‘zero text’ itself. The political potential of the ‘zero text’ under an au-thoritarian regime becomes apparent, for instance, in the famous joke about Rabino-vich handing out blank pamphlets in Red Square, but it can also be seen in the literal-ization of folkloric motifs in a number of protest demonstrations in post-Soviet Rus-sia. The origin of these demonstrations can be traced to ‘zero texts’ used in the poet-ic avant-garde (“Poem of the End” by Vasilisk Gnedov, for example) and in neo- or post-avant-garde practices from the second half of the 20th century – in particular, those associated with names like Alexander Kondratov and Dmitriy A. Prigov, whose work actualized the political semantics of the ‘missing text.’

Keywords: авангард, Avant-garde, Political Poetry, нулевой текст, Aleksander Kondratov, zero text, Александр Кондратов, политическая поэзия, Dmitrii Alexandrovich Prigov, Дмитрий Александович Пригов