The Legacy of 1917 in Graphic Satire

In: Slavic review: interdisciplinary quarterly of Russian, Eurasian and East European studies, Band 76, Heft 3, S. 664-674

Abstract

This essay explores political cartoons published in various journals in 1917, and investigates the legacy of that year's graphic satire. As many previous works have noted, the revolutions of 1917 brought struggles for the meaning of signs, and in political cartoons there were marked changes in subject matter and visual vocabulary. While previous studies have interpreted these developments as illustrations of political revolution, this essay, which is based on original research, will argue that the fundamental shift that began in 1917 was towards a kind of visual satirical discourse that possessed performative power. Proposing a new conceptual framework for analysis based on theories of performativity, the theoretical contribution of this essay will be to show how graphic satire reveals the performative force of cartoons, by arguing that Soviet graphic satire's aesthetic invites readers' critical engagement with contemporary discourses, a vision that derives from the political cartoons of 1917.