Meaning making in the graphic novel by S. Anufriev and P. Pepperstein “The mythogenic love of castes”

A recently published graphic novel, 'The Mythogenic Love of Castes', based on the novel by S. Anufriev and P. Pepperstein, actualizes the original text by bringing many artists together. The original novel, initially read as psychedelic and postmodern, is grounded in Moscow Conceptualism and offers a new type of unreliable narrator that abandons unified sequences of ideas. It develops conceptualist systematizations of experience and continues experimental anthropology linked to Garfinkel and Castaneda. The graphic novel format aids critique of self-evidence by conveying both psychedelic realism and questioning of obviousness, focusing on the structure of thought, and introducing iconological techniques impossible in traditional illustrations. The graphic novel provides a consistent genre characterization for the literary novel.

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Abstract

The article explores a recently published graphic novel “The Mythogenic Love of Castes”, which is an art project based on the novel of the same name by S. Anufriev and P. Pepperstein. Pepperstein, the leader of the project, brought many artists on board to perform it, allowing the novel, which at its appearance was read exclusively as psychedelic and postmodern, to be actualized. In fact, being based on the ideas of Moscow Conceptualism this novel has offered a new type of unreliable narrator, which abandons Platonic and classicist schemes of a unified sequence of ideas and images. A number of explicit provisions of Moscow Conceptualism, in particular, the systematization of public and private experience on the basis of the general idea of the ordinary and the unbelievable, have been developed in the novel. The novel is not reduced to the psychedelic canon and new forms of storytelling but continues the experimental practice in the anthropology associated with the name of G. Garfinkel, whose method is partly assimilated through the work of Castaneda. But if in the 1990s this could be explained as a critique of ideologies, in the contemporary cultural situation a critique of self-evidence as a new explanation is needed. The graphic novel has several advantages for this critique of self-evidence: a) it allows us to convey both the main plot of psychedelic realism and the side plot of questioning obviousness, which when reading the book are often mixed together as a single motif of undermining familiar body images, b) it allows to focus not only on the action but also on the structure of the character’s thought, which has its own duration, c) it allows to introduce a series of iconological techniques which are impossible in the format of traditional illustrations for the novel. It is concluded that the graphic novel allows to give a consistent genre characteristic to the original literary novel.