gifts

[Simon Krysl]

Dear all,
first, many apologies for bothering you with a query: a literary query, if
one with a social- historical - relevance.
I am a graduate student in the Literature Program at Duke, currently
preparing a class on the theme of gifts and gift-giving. My own work has
been, however, mainly on Eastern European, socialist 20th century: and I
would love to include something, anything, that could show how could the
image of the gift operate in a society which is, in intention/ project -
or, in historical "actuality"
- other than capitalist. To the extent the image always refers to,
expresses or discloses, the nature of commodity culture, it may not come as
a surprise that there is little representation of gifts in Russian - or
other "socialist" - literatures altogether: the reasons for that being so,
in comparison with the Western European tradition, are obviously more
complex than the above. (Not that commodity/ capital would not be a
determining presence in societies which claimed themselves or were claimed
post-capitalist: but it is so in different ways.) Yet generally, I am not
sure that (besides Nabokov and one Brecht's play, from the Finnish exile to
boot) there are no gift images in Russian (Polish, Czech, East German...)
literature and culture (art examples would be as interesting): I just do
not know of, and was not able to find, any.
Would anyone - perhaps - know of a "text" (in the widest sense) which
peruses the image/theme of gifts and gift-giving - in howeever cursory and
apparently accidental way - and comes from the "Second World" cultural
territory? Or "at least" - which would be to approach the question from
another angle - any treatment of gift-giving or gift economy in this space
in the historical discourse?
Many thanks,
sincerely,

Simon Krysl
Graduate Program in Literature
Duke University

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