International conference organized by Ioulia Podoroga (Paris IAS/Univ. Genève), Grégory Dufaud (CNRS/CERMES3), Alexei Yurchak (Univ. of California, Berkeley) and Larissa Zakharova (EHESS/CERCEC), with the support of Paris IAS, CERCEC, CNRS, Ile-de-France region, EHESS, LabEx Tepsis, BULAC, France-Berkeley Fund, Programme ACCES and CHRS.

The event will take place at EHESS (September 22nd), at Paris IAS (September 23rd) and at BULAC (September 24th).

Presentation

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, history of science has made significant progress. One topic however was disregarded: scientific utopia, fascinating and intriguing, because situated on the border between literature and science. This conference aims to understand how fiction, thanks to its heuristic function, managed to participate in the transformation of scientific activity and reconfigure science and power relation. First of all, we will focus on the relation between fiction and science, in order to explore how literature and film have taken over and readapted some of the concepts based on scientific discoveries and, conversely, how science used the imagery proposed by fiction to sustain its discourse, challenge its findings or launch the brand new experiments. This double movement is clearly mediated by power. This is why we will be attentive to the social command and the mechanisms of censorship at work.
Through this relation between fiction, science and power we also wish to explore the idea of progress and its meaning during this period. If Soviet authorities made of science mother of progress, the belief in the impending communism started fading in the sixties. To what extent have scientific utopias reflected this evolution? What kind of imagery did they offer to the public? Utopias are rooted in the reality of their time and reveal its concerns. Then, what are the concerns they convey? Have they developed a discourse on risk that scientists would then reappropriate? For what reasons?

Program
September 23rd / Paris IAS

POWER AND AMBIVALENCE OF SCIENCE (09.00-10.50)
Chair: Françoise Daucé (EHESS/CERCEC/IUF)

09.00-09.20. Daniela Steila (University of Turin): Statistics and the Utopia of a Global Control
09.20-09.40. Leonid Heller (Lausanne University): The Total Body of a New Man: Projected, Prosthetic and Trained Organs
09.40-10.00. Annick Morard (Geneva University): Physical Monstrosities and Utopia(s) in Alexandre Beliaev’s Novels
10.00-10.20. Discussant: Egle Rindzeviciute (Kingston University London)
10.20-10.50. Discussion
10.50-11.10. Coffee break

THE ENERGY OF SOCIALISM (11.10-13.00)
Chair: Alexei Kojevnikov (University of British Columbia)

11.10-11.30. Il’ia Kalinin (Saint-Petersburg State University): Energy andSocialism: between Electrification and ‘Electrofiction’
11.30-11.50. Anindita Banerjee (Cornell University): Red Allah’s Oil: Petroutopia in the Shadow of Empire
11.50-12.10. Discussant: Anna Åberg (Chalmers University of Technology
in Gothenburg, Sweden)
12.10-12.30. Discussion
12.30-14.00. Lunch

THE QUEST FOR IMMORTALITY (14.00-16.20)
Chair: Catherine Depretto (University Paris-IV)

14.00-14.20. Alexei Yurchak (UC Berkeley): Dead Cyborg: Lenin’s Body between Art and Biology
14.20-14.40. Anna Schor-Tschudnowskaja (S. Freud University, Wien): Individual and Collective Immortality at the Junction of Utopia and Ideology in the USSR
14.40-15.00. Joy Neumeyer (UC Berkeley): Faces of Death: Soviet Immortality in Plaster
15.00-15.20. Anya Bernstein (Harvard University): The Gates of Immortality: Life Extension and Space Exploration in the Soviet Science and Fiction (1960s-1980s)
15.20-15.40. Discussant: Nikolai Krementsov (University of Toronto)
15.40-16.20. Discussion
16.20-16.40. Coffee break

PROFESSIONAL MILIEUS OF UTOPIA (16.40-18.40)
Chair: Alexandr Dmitriev (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)

16.40-17.00. Matthias Schwartz (Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin): A New Poetics of Science. On the Establishment of “Scientific-Artistic Literature” in the Late Stalin Period
17.00-17.20. Thomas William McLenachan (UCL SSEES, London): Nuclear Utopias in Cold War Culture. The Representation of the Physicist in Soviet Film (1962-1972)
17.20-17.40. Slava Gerovitch (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Will Mathematics Save the World? The Strugatsky Brothers and the Ethos of the Soviet Mathematics Community in the 1970s
17.40-18.00. Discussant: Alexei Kojevnikov (University of British Columbia)
18.00-18.30. Discussion

Scientific Committee : Anna Åberg (Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden),
Korine Amacher (Geneva University), Catherine Depretto (University Paris-IV),
Leonid Heller (Lausanne University), Alexei Kojevnikov (University of British Columbia),
Nikolai Krementsov (University of Toronto), Valérie Pozner (CNRS/ARIAS), Egle Rindzeviciute
(Kingston University London), Alexandr Dmitriev (Higher School of Economics - Moscow)