Hypertext chronotope and online carnival in <i>I/e_ rus. Olim</i>

The online novel I/e_ rus. Olim by Israeli-Russian writers Mikhailichenko and Nesis represents media transformation since the 1990s. The novel creates an atmosphere of internet carnivalesque which serves both as a literary response to historical events-including the collapse of the Soviet Union and the mass Jewish emigration from the former USSR to Israel, and notably excluding the politics of Israel and Palestine-and a transcendence of both mainstream Israeli discourse and the Russian intellectual tradition. Using collective online writing, hypertext chronotope, and virtual reality, it reconstructs Jerusalem, turning political reality into a myth-deconstructing role-playing game. Employing Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque, this paper analyzes how online carnival subverts Israel's “center-periphery” order and reshapes cultural identity into a fluid “hypercultural” state, and in so doing offers an analytical path beyond binary oppositions for understanding diasporic identity in the age of internet media.