Russian Formalism and Trajectories of Evolution: How Viktor Shklovsky Challenged the Boundaries of Historicism

Abstract This article attempts to place Russian Formalism in a perspective that actualizes the political and socio-critical potential of this literary theory. This reading is linked to an appeal to subaltern and postcolonial studies, which have turned to uncovering the interrelationships between political supremacy, economic domination, and symbolic hegemony, piercing authoritative models of cultural interpretation and historical narratives of its development. The analysis of the theoretical, historical-literary, and literary texts of OPOYAZ representatives (especially Shklovsky) allows one to reconstruct intuitions and arguments similar to the critique of cultural hierarchies and progressivist paradigms that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. This logic can be used to describe the commonality of theoretical emphases that characterized the work of Petrograd Formalists and Southeast Asian scholars, which emerged as a theoretical aftershock following revolutions, the collapse of empires, and anti-colonial wars.