Associate Professor Nina Shcherbak: "Postcolonial culture is about the revival of life and traditional values"

In our previous interview published on 2 February 2022, we spoke a lot about foreign lectures and international activities. It seems to me that the world has completely changed in less than a year. Could you please describe what has changed and which international events you managed to take part in?

It is true that the world has changed. Under these conditions, it seemed important to me to deliver the online course "Modern Foreign Literature". Other countries are not only about politics, they are also about culture and centuries-old manifestations of human relationships and knowledge. That cannot be ruled out overnight. I therefore delivered a video course about the literature of France, Latin America, North America, Great Britain, Japan, and Scandinavia. There was an inner hope to reconcile some things and not to demonstrate tit-for-tat reciprocity.

We all knew and felt that there would be opportunities to support international cooperation. A teleconference with the Huazhong University of Science and Technology turned out to be a successful solution. We got in touch with their Department of Philosophy and organised a conference on hermeneutics. From our part, postgraduate students and teachers participated: Elvira Miachinskaia, Associate Professor in the Department of English Philology and Cultural Linguistics; Irina Pavlovskaia, Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguodidactics; Alena Gerus, a master’s student at St Petersburg University; and Vladimir Egorov, Assistant Professor at the Russian Christian Academy for the Humanities. From the Chinese part, the conference was attended by professors who presented a variety of interdisciplinary reports, as well as those related to philosophy, hermeneutics, and linguistics. About a hundred people were invited. It was a massive online event.

Another important step in the interaction of the University within the framework of international cooperation was the work of the Representative Office of St Petersburg University in Barcelona. This summer, its director Anna Silyunas delivered a very subtle, emotionally rich and truly amazing lecture about Marina Tsvetaeva. Then, I also wanted to deliver a series of lectures devoted to poets of the Russian Silver Age. I am happy that my lectures are broadcast online both at St Petersburg University and in Barcelona. I spoke about Russian culture, the Silver Age poets, the works of George Ivanov and Irina Odoevtseva, Vladimir Nabokov, Vyacheslav Ivanov’s "Tower", Nina Berberova and Vladislav Khodasevich, and the "iron woman" Baroness von Benckendorff, née Zakrevskaya. The latter, by the way, was a double agent and close friend of Herbert George Wells, Maxim Gorky and the British Ambassador to Russia Sir Lockhart. There were also lectures on English-language prose, women’s prose, and modern stagings of Shakespeare. Lectures on French literature, American romanticism, Scandinavian literature and others are scheduled. The Casa Rusa has an amazingly pleasant atmosphere. Thanks to its wonderful team, everything is very well arranged and coordinated.

Are there any plans in this field?

Another attempt to develop international relations is interaction with Iranian universities through the Vice-Rector for International Affairs of St Petersburg University. Iran is a completely new state and culture for me, although the charm of the Orient, perhaps, does not leave me for a minute. Of course, Iran is not only Teheran 43 (a 1980 detective movie made jointly by the USSR, Switzerland and France — Ed. note) and the Persian Motifs cycle by Sergei Yesenin. We still have a lot to discover. I hope we will be able to give impetus to this relationship.

At one of the conferences, you spoke about postcolonial literature. Today, the concept of post-colonialism in the context of the formation of a new global world order seems to be a highly relevant one. Please tell us more about that.

I love this topic very much. Postcolonial literature is a term that applies exclusively to Britain, Spain, and Portugal, since it is part of their history. The fact is that the culture of India, for example, was being revived after 1947 when Britain had finally left its colony. India was left by employees, officers, wives, and all of those who enjoyed the hospitality of the country, who filmed both the luxury of the life of Maharajas and the horrors of the poverty of common people, as well as the rhinos and tigers they killed themselves. They left the country where there were doorplates at cafes reading "Hindus and dogs not allowed". The country whose emeralds and gold were exported by whole ships. The country that was enslaved but whose people, by virtue of their own culture and love of life, came to love their colonisers.

Theorists of post-colonialism distinguish the stages of protest, assimilation, and the formation of own identity. Often, in the process of personality formation in a post-colony, a person experienced a psychological breakdown. All that is reflected in literature.

Can you give examples of writers and their works?

For example, Joseph Conrad, a classic writer, marvels at the Congo River and the locals from the board of his wonderful and luxurious ship sailing along the Thames actually. How can a writer know anything about the life of the colonies and their culture if he has never been there? This is pseudo-literature about life in the colonies. Today, female Western theorists are protesting against the traditions of the Orient in just the same way. But how can they judge the rituals and ceremonies of other cultures that are unusual for the West?

Nevertheless, there is true postcolonial literature. For example, the wonderful British writer Zadie Smith. Her mother is from Jamaica. Her novel White Teeth tells us about the interaction of cultures and about the fact that a postcolonial inhabitant cannot refuse the history of their kind. We are all carriers of the bloodlines and cultures of which we are part. The characters of Zadie Smith had relatives who were prisoners of concentration camps. They participated in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 when the British forced the Indians to grease their rifles with pig or cow fat which was contrary to the Indian religion. For the author, fragments and reflections of this collective memory live in every modern person. Zadie Smith is a cheerful author, however. Like many other postcolonial writers, she speaks not only of political correctness, but of a sense of ancestral traditions and wisdom. Postcolonial culture is in many ways about the revival of life and traditional values that Western civilisation is lacking greatly sometimes.

What other research have you started this year and what are your plans for 2023?

Now, I am engaged in the theory of the sign. Communication is actually not limited to a specific situation in which the speakers participate. The information and communicators can be the most random ones. You can get an unexpected phone call, hear someone’s comment in the street, or accidentally meet a person who will completely change your life. It demonstrates that life is more complex and interesting than it sometimes seems to a linguist. This is a conversation about the "transcendence of the sign" and about its hidden properties.

Poets, for example, convey hidden meanings in a much subtler way than an ordinary person. The rhythm of Thomas Stearns Eliot’s verse with its vocalisations and mirror reflections. The prose of Jeanette Winterson or Jerome David Salinger opens up the potential of opportunities that the element of language has within itself. The issue of eternity is also related to this subject. According to Pavel Florensky, a renowned Russian theologian, when believers are looking at an icon, they see God, while unbelievers see a painted board. This is also about the ability of consciousness to tune in and see what is not always obvious, to catch connections that are not clearly expressed. This is not only a personal vision, as it may seem. This is precisely the attunement of life.

For more than two years the educational process has been subordinated to the pandemic. During this period, many students managed to graduate and three generations of first-years have been enrolled. In this academic year, we entirely returned to the classroom-based format. Have your students changed during the pandemic?

We have all changed a lot. The students seem to have matured. I often discussed this moment at first, after two years of sitting in front of computers, at a distance from each other. The students do not show it, of course, but, obviously, they seem to care about each other more. And this care is an adult one. It is practical. Less time is spent on fruitless discussions.

My first lecture after the pandemic was in room 25 at 11 Universitetskaya Embankment. The windows of this room face St Isaac’s Cathedral, and there are portraits of great philologists and linguists hanging on the walls. It was amazing to be there after such a break. I was walking around the building with the feeling that something had been lost for good. I was afraid that the lecture would be difficult to deliver. But our teachers were looking at me, so I started talking about each of them, and the lecture "began and proceeded" as usual, in the customary way. It seems to me that we have fully compensated now for all the difficulties that we had to face during the pandemic.

Did the pandemic teach the younger generation to read more, in your opinion? What would you recommend?

Our students read a lot. They are interested in life, history and culture. I advise them reading both foreign and Russian literature. It helps us understand the difference between cultures.

You read well-known works and look at them in a new way. For example, I re-read Alexander Pushkin’s The Stationmaster and, surprisingly, compared it with the Gospel.

What other projects are you currently involved in?

It seems to me that new projects are an opportunity to learn about what is happening today in our country and at the University. For instance, the "I am Professional" Olympiad is being developed very actively. We all prepare assignments and tests for our students so that their interest in philology and culture could grow.

Recently, my colleagues and I have been invited to the Kremlin Palace for a grand awards ceremony of the Russian Society "Znanie". This event is now held annually. It involves a huge number of participants. The jury is composed of very famous persons. This means that new ideas and new knowledge are required, so there are real opportunities to manifest yourself. And this is truly great!