Open Access―SHADOW AND BONE‖: NEGATIVE SPACES OF MEAN-ING
Author(s) -
A. A. Gobinskaya
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
istoriâ: fakty i simvoly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2949-2866
pISSN - 2410-4205
DOI - 10.24888/2410-4205-2021-28-3-94-107
Subject(s) - shadow (psychology) , popularity , interpretation (philosophy) , empire , politics , meaning (existential) , aesthetics , sociology , history , literature , epistemology , political science , law , art , philosophy , psychology , linguistics , psychoanalysis
The debut novel Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo promises the magical journey through the world of fictional country Ravka, which was inspired by the Russian Empire of the 1800s. In this article, I discuss three negative spaces outlined by Bardugo‟s text. These are negative spaces of Russian culture, politics and dynamics revealed by the long absence of Russian translation of the novel. Having this possible interpretation in mind, I cannot speculate that Bardugo deliberately chose to let the body of her work outline and shape the negative spaces discussed in this article. The reception potential of her work is wider and more diverse than the author intended. She tries to prune it back to the shape of her original intentions, interfering with the process of the reader‟s meaning-making. Thus, in a certain way, she pushes back against the concept of the “death of the author”. With this dichotomic process, I suggest stepping away from the author‟s intentions and tracing the subtle trends of the market, that contributed to Bardugo‟s popularity. The discussion I want to open is not whether Bardugo intended to create a book that exploits Russian culture without doing justice to it, hinting towards a New Cold War, and separating the world to the familiar poles of the West and East.