{"title":"“Reading” Pathologic 2: Russian Literature as a Trans-Medial Idea","authors":"Matthew Kendall","doi":"10.1016/j.ruslit.2022.11.004","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article offers an analysis of a recent Russian computer game, <em>Pathologic 2</em>, which simulates an epidemic in a Russian provincial town. Unusually, the game has widely been called a “literary” experience by both its players and creators. By making use of theories of narration and mediation from Peter Brooks, Friedrich Kittler, and Patrick Jagoda, I ask whether the medium of the digital game can ever produce an experience that is related to or informed by the concept of “literariness” in both a Russian Formalist and broadly intellectual sense. By exploring how <em>Pathologic 2</em><span> incorporates material from well-known texts by Fedor Dostoevskii and Aleksandr Blok, I argue that the digital game reduces Russian literature to a “trans-medial” phenomenon, and that this reduction can be understood as one impact of twenty-first-century networked computing on literary activity and institutions. Moreover, I consider the impact of contemporary geopolitics on how the global industry of digital games understands Russia and, by extension, Russian literature.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":43192,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN LITERATURE","volume":"138 ","pages":"Pages 193-215"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"RUSSIAN LITERATURE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304347922001132","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, SLAVIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article offers an analysis of a recent Russian computer game, Pathologic 2, which simulates an epidemic in a Russian provincial town. Unusually, the game has widely been called a “literary” experience by both its players and creators. By making use of theories of narration and mediation from Peter Brooks, Friedrich Kittler, and Patrick Jagoda, I ask whether the medium of the digital game can ever produce an experience that is related to or informed by the concept of “literariness” in both a Russian Formalist and broadly intellectual sense. By exploring how Pathologic 2 incorporates material from well-known texts by Fedor Dostoevskii and Aleksandr Blok, I argue that the digital game reduces Russian literature to a “trans-medial” phenomenon, and that this reduction can be understood as one impact of twenty-first-century networked computing on literary activity and institutions. Moreover, I consider the impact of contemporary geopolitics on how the global industry of digital games understands Russia and, by extension, Russian literature.
期刊介绍:
Russian Literature combines issues devoted to special topics of Russian literature with contributions on related subjects in Croatian, Serbian, Czech, Slovak and Polish literatures. Moreover, several issues each year contain articles on heterogeneous subjects concerning Russian Literature. All methods and viewpoints are welcomed, provided they contribute something new, original or challenging to our understanding of Russian and other Slavic literatures. Russian Literature regularly publishes special issues devoted to: • the historical avant-garde in Russian literature and in the other Slavic literatures • the development of descriptive and theoretical poetics in Russian studies and in studies of other Slavic fields.